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4 treatment settings, 4 with more than one named option. Each section lays out the options the standard of care names, what each is for, the trials behind them with their recorded results, the side effects and cautions on record, and questions to ask. Built from the cancer page's standard-of-care rows; nothing here is advice for your case.
Observation with MRI and audiometry, typically yearly; treatment on documented growth or hearing decline.
For low-risk prostate cancer, monitoring with PSA, MRI, and repeat biopsy instead of treating, because most such cancers never cause harm.
MRI uses a strong magnet and radio waves, with no ionising radiation, to picture soft tissue in finer contrast than CT, so it is the standard scan for brain tumours, prostate, rectal cancer staging, liver lesions and breast screening in high-risk women. It is slow, expensive and blurred by movement.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Stereotactic radiosurgery (Gamma Knife, CyberKnife or linac) at about 12 to 13 Gy, or fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy; microsurgery in younger patients or by preference.
A single very high dose, or a few doses, aimed at a small brain or spine target with millimetre precision, replacing whole-brain radiotherapy for most brain metastases.
The original radiosurgery machine: about two hundred cobalt-60 sources arranged in a shielded helmet whose beams cross at one point inside the brain, so a metastasis or benign tumour a few millimetres across receives a destructive dose in a single visit while the brain around it is spared.
A small accelerator on an industrial robot arm that aims hundreds of pencil-thin beams from any direction and follows the tumour as the patient breathes, so brain, spine, prostate, lung and pancreatic tumours can be treated in one to five sessions without a head frame.
IMRT and IGRT shape the radiation beam to the tumour's outline from multiple angles and check the patient's position with a scan before every session, so surrounding organs receive less dose. Fewer, larger doses are now standard in breast and prostate cancer, but a low-dose bath still spreads across normal tissue.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Microsurgical resection with facial nerve monitoring, sometimes deliberately subtotal followed by radiosurgery to the remnant; shunting for hydrocephalus.
A single very high dose, or a few doses, aimed at a small brain or spine target with millimetre precision, replacing whole-brain radiotherapy for most brain metastases.
MRI uses a strong magnet and radio waves, with no ionising radiation, to picture soft tissue in finer contrast than CT, so it is the standard scan for brain tumours, prostate, rectal cancer staging, liver lesions and breast screening in high-risk women. It is slow, expensive and blurred by movement.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.