Brain Tumor – Lifestyle

Transcript

The day to day, and lifestyle changes that the brain tumor can affect does not only rely on where the tumor is and what the individual is gone through, but also really rests upon what stages of therapy that they’re embarking upon. So the management of malignant gliomas really is a three-step process. Surgical intervention, radiation, along with oral chemotherapy for six weeks, followed by an adjuvant chemotherapy. Usually with temozolomide alone. The first portion, again, as we talked about earlier, that the individual undergoes a resection of their tumor, they’ll be discharged home quite often. They’ll end up having to monitor their wound, monitor fever, any temperature that they might have. They might experience some headaches, nausea, vomiting, at which time usually the neurosurgeon will be contacted. I’ll be contacted at which we’ll talk about increasing various dosage of medications, including decadron. They may end up having a seizure during their postoperative period which will increase their seizure medication. Usually the most common one that we use these days is Keppra or Levetiracetam. Most of us will try to stay away from medications that are Dilantin or (?) or similar medications as they can affect chemotherapy that’s used in the future and can affect various other organs.