Glioma

CORTICAL MAPPING USING MOTOR EVOKED POTENTIALS IN GLIOMA SURGERY INTRODUCTION The aim of glioma surgery is to get maximum resection of a tumor with minimal violation of normal brain tissue. A primary tenet of neurosurgical oncology is that survival can improve with greater tumor resection, but this principle must be tempered by the potential for functional loss after a radical removal. It has always been a challenge to achieve this ?functional? resection especially when eloquent cortex is close by or intimately involved with the tumor. Various methods of localizing eloquent cortex have been and are currently being used. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) and other neurophysiological testing is now available to the neurosurgeon intraoperatively. CASE A 36 year old male presented to the emergency department at the University Hospital of the West Indies with a one week history of headaches and a first time seizure episode on the day of presentation. He was not known to have any chronic illnesses and was well until the headaches started. He described his headaches as pounding in nature,…

There are different types of Gliomas- or brain tumors. Gliomas are named based on what type of brain cell they affect. The three types of Gliomas are called Ependymomas, Astrocytomas, and Oligodendrogliomas. “Only about two to three percent of brain tumors are Ependymomas. However Ependymomas makes up about ten percent of tumors in children.”(Brain Cancer and Gliomas) This particular type of tumor does not grow into the normal brain tissue, but has a high risk of recurrence. Some Ependymomas can…

Charles Joseph Whitman was a twenty-five year old male living in Austin, Texas and enrolled in the University of Texas. He was married to Kathleen Leissner and had three younger siblings by his biological parents Charles Adolphus and Margaret Hodges Whitman. He grew up in a very authoritarian style household and his parents had marital problems brought on by the physical and emotional abuse of Charles Adolphus. Charles Whitman was a part of the Boy Scouts at a young age, joined the United States…

Glioblastoma Multiforme Glioblastoma Multiforme, or GBM, is the most aggressive and most common primary brain tumor, but it isn’t quite that simple. GBM has quite a complex background and can start in many different ways, so that’s why I feel I should start from the very beginning of GBM so that you can fully understand what it is all about. Let me start by saying that GBM is the highest grade of glioma brain tumors, so it only makes sense for me to tell where GBM and glioma tumors come…

about the Gliomas, Meningiomas, Metastatic tumors and miscellaneous tumors. A stroke is defined as a cerebrovascular accident (CVA), cerebrovascular insult (CVI) is when poor blood flow to the brain results in cell death. It disrupts the blood flow. Risk factor includes a heart disease, cardiac arrhythmias, diabetes, smoking, obesity. Strokes can be visualized unto two types ischemic or hemorrhagic. Ischemic is caused due to lack of blood flow. Hemorrhagic is due to bleeding. Signs and symptoms…

Worldwide, malignant glioma is the most common type of central nervous system tumor in humans, and is characterized by high morbidity and mortality rates (1). The current standard of care consists of maximal surgical resection, followed by radiotherapy with concomitant and adjuvant temozolomide. Despite this multimodal approach, median survival is limited to six months (2). This poor prognosis is mainly due to the invasive potential of malignant glioma (3). To date, the molecular mechanisms…

Acoustic Neuroma and Optic Nerve Glioma The brain is a superhighway of complex and intricate systems that control every function of the human body, but what if something goes wrong? These are the cases of two interesting problems; Optic Nerve Gliomas and Acoustic Neuromas. Two forms of brain tumors that directly affect some of the body's most important functions sight, hearing, and balance. These tumors can affect the body beyond those in many adverse ways. Acoustic Neuromas, or AN’s for the…

CLINICAL QUESTION: In patients undergoing brain surgery for glioma resection, what is the risk of iatrogenic brain damage due to the surgery? SYNOPSIS: This meta-analysis included 90 studies published between 1990 to 2010 comprised of a total of 8,091 adult patients undergoing surgery for resection of supratentorial infiltrative gliomas. The study aimed to find out if intraoperative brain stimulation mapping (ISM) prior to resection of the glioma lowered the risk of neurologic damage seen with…

the genomic alterations driving the growth of recurrences are distinct from those present in the initial tumor. To explore this hypothesis, our group sequenced the exomes of 23 initial low-grade gliomas and recurrent tumors resected from the same patients [REF]. In 43% of cases, at least half of the mutations in the initial tumor were undetected at recurrence, including driver mutations in TP53, ATRX, SMARCA4, and BRAF. This suggests that recurrent tumors could be derived from cells that…

These derivatives were CA4 and CTX-23, these derivatives were used to see what would happen when they were used to treat glioma cells. They derived these peptides from two other peptides which were chlorotoxin and BmKCT 18,19. Then the scientist made the derivatives and through Polymerase chain reaction, they managed to amplify them and put them in a plasmid. Later they became E. coli cells that were purified even further. Later, they used different concentrations of the chlorotoxin derivatives…