Treating Malignant Brain Tumors at Wake Forest Baptist Health скачать в хорошем качестве

Treating Malignant Brain Tumors at Wake Forest Baptist Health

Wake Forest Baptist Health oncologist Glenn Lesser, MD, typically sees patients with primary malignant brain tumors, the most common of which is the glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Wake Forest Baptist Health has a very active research program for patients with brain tumors. Novel and cutting-edge therapies are developed and used right here at our academic medical center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Learn more about Brain Tumor Treatment at Wake Forest Baptist: http://www.wakehealth.edu/Comprehensi.... TRANSCRIPT: I'm Dr. Glenn Lesser, I'm a professor of Internal Medicine in the Section of Hematology and Oncology at Wake Forest Baptist Health. Brain tumors are unusual in that they're both a common and uncommon disease we treat. We talk first about primary brain tumors- that is tumors that start in the brain- they really are a very unusual or uncommon set of tumors that afflict maybe 17- to 20,000 or so folks in this country each year. On the other hand, metastatic brain tumors- tumors that start somewhere in the body and spread to the brain are much more common- maybe as many as 200- to 300,000 patients a year experience those tumors. When we talk about the primary malignant brain tumors there are many, many types including both benign and malignant tumors. Some of the more common tumors that we see thankfully aren't malignant- things like meningiomas which really for most patients are an annoyance but not a true cancer that's going to cause them a great deal of illness even death. Patients that I typically see have what we would call a primary malignant brain tumors and the most common of those are the astrocytomas- again the most common within that group is called the glioblastoma multiforme or GBM. When we think about primary malignant brain tumors, historically chemotherapy has had a very small role to play in the treatment of those patients. We've known for many, many years that aggressive surgery is important and for almost as long that radiation therapy plays an important role for whatever tumor's left behind after a surgery. Up until perhaps seven or eight years ago, we had relatively little evidence that the various chemotherapy drugs that we had and gave to these patients really did much to add to the benefits of the surgery and the radiation. Over the last decade or so, chemotherapy has turned out to be a very important part of the treatment of these patients with the advent or the availability of a newer drug called temozolomide or Temodar. In fact, the use of Temodar along with surgery and radiation therapy now represents the standard and best treatment really for patients around the world with the really aggressive brain tumors- glioblastoma multiforme. We're fortunate to have a very active research program for patients with brain tumors here at Wake Forest. We have a variety of clinical trials that originate from research and advances made right here within our institution. We collaborate with institutions in the state and really around the country to bring very novel and cutting-edge developments again right here to the folks that we serve and we're active nationally also to take and test the best and most promising advances that have been found elsewhere in patients throughout our region and throughout the country. Because of that, we've had access to many new therapies and many drugs that very few places around the country have been able to test- things ranging from gene therapies and traditional cytotoxic chemotherapies, to new techniques and new surgical devices, now to the era of targeted therapies and vaccines and really have been able to bring an entire range of novel therapies to the patients we serve.