Brain Tumor

Definition

Brain tumors (BT) are tumors which reside in the brain or spinal cord. They include abnormal cell proliferation of neurons or glial cells, in the cranial nervous, in the skull, in the limbic system, in the brain stem, or in the spinal cord. Metastasis may develop in the cortex. The severity of BT varies greatly, since this depends on their size, location, type, and stage of development upon detection. Those all are referred to as primary BT. Since often BT are hidden from the eye due to the skull, BT may be directly detected only via brain scans. Another type of BT is secondary BT, where peripheral tumors metastasize to the brain, mainly seen in lung, breast, and colon cancers and melanoma. Primary BT are among the ten most fatal cancers, with over 51,000 new cases diagnosed every year in the USA alone (Starkweather et al. 2011).

The most common type of BT is astrocytoma, where 75 % of patients die within 5 years of diagnosis. Glioblastomas are one type of BT, with a median...