The diagnosis of a brain tumor begins an involved process to pinpoint further information. LSU Health New Orleans Neuro-oncologist Aaron Mammoser explains in this video.
When people think of neuro-oncology or of brain tumors, the most common thing that comes to mind is Glioblastoma because it’s the tumor that’s most prevalent. And, it’s the one that we hear the most about. But there are a lot of different tumors, either primary brain tumors or secondary or metastatic brain tumors that people can be diagnosed with. When there is something that’s identified on an MRI or otherwise, there is an involved process that takes place to kind of determine what we’re dealing with.
Many times that means doing additional imaging to see if there are any other areas throughout the body, where that abnormality may have come from, that may be more accessible. If we don’t identify something like that, often we’re onto performing surgery or a biopsy in order to get a tissue diagnosis.
Over the last decade, one of the things that we’ve realized is, even tumors that look the same under the microscope and even given a specific name, there are a lot of different mutations and things that can be present in these tumors that would change not only treatment but prognosis and the sort of things that people can expect, that comes with a brain tumor diagnosis.
One of the things that we specialize in, in our program is recognizing that not every tumor is the same, and that your diagnosis really depends on all gathering all of the information and understanding how to put that together to form the best treatment plan.
To learn more about available brain tumor clinical trials currently underway, please visit nolabraintumor.com or call (504)568-1611.
