Cooking Brain Tumors

J

John_Keck

Limp Gawd
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May 3, 2010
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Neurosurgeons are using a MRI-guided high-intensity laser probe to “cook” inoperable brain tumors. :eek:

According to Dr. Eric C. Leuthardt, this procedure "offers hope to certain patients who had few or no options before," with the laser baking the cancer cells deep within the brain while leaving the good tissue around it unmarred. The best part, however, is that this is already moving beyond the laboratory, with a pair of doctors at Barnes-Jewish Hospital using it successfully on a patient last month.
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The doctors/nerds that came up with that deserve a Nobel.

And if I ever have to have it done I want the doctor named, McCoy, Crusher, etc.
 
The technology of using lasers to operate on brain tumors without damaging any other part of the brain, for the last 10 years? I know lasers are used for many things, this wasn't one of them.

My uncle died from an inoperable brain tumor. Wish we'd had this type of technology back then, there's a chance (even a slight one?) that he would still be with us.

And I can see cancer laser surgery being used beyond brain tumors.
 
ditzilla said:
The technology of using lasers to operate on brain tumors without damaging any other part of the brain, for the last 10 years? I know lasers are used for many things, this wasn't one of them.

My uncle died from an inoperable brain tumor. Wish we'd had this type of technology back then, there's a chance (even a slight one?) that he would still be with us.

And I can see cancer laser surgery being used beyond brain tumors.
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Maybe this is a newer system, but laser brain surgery has been around for a while.
 
Crucible1001 said:
My first thought was someone making dinner out of cooked brain tumors.
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Unfortunately my mind went there too, like that story about a woman in Britain who cooked and ate her own placenta and wrote about it.
 
What about the dead parts? They just leave it in? And thats healthy?
 
CMD said:
What about the dead parts? They just leave it in? And thats healthy?
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I couldn't say for sure in this case, but in many cases the human body will subsume or otherwise dispose of such things.
 
MrValentine said:
The doctors/nerds that came up with that deserve a Nobel.

And if I ever have to have it done I want the doctor named, McCoy, Crusher, etc.
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I'd be a bit nervous about McCoy. Too many "He's dead, Jim."s for my liking.
 
This is awesome tech. The people that invented it definitely deserve to be at least in the running for a Nobel prize. Brain cancer is one thing that scares the living hell out of me. I think I could probably cope pretty well should I ever get cancer in any other spot (God forbid), but I have no idea how I'd handle brain cancer.
 
That's going to be a wonderful tool in killing cancer of any kind,I feel like with advancements in technology all the time,the more they tweak on using this,the better. I wish this was available for my mother in 2004 when she had brain cancer.
 
I can imagine once they perfect it to the point that it isn't a last hope kind of therapy for people with inoperable tumors it'll be used on all kinds of cancer. It'd be pretty awesome to be able to rid cancerous tissue from all parts of the body without so much as a scratch to the skin. Radiation and chemo does all kinds of damage to all the surrounding tissue and can kill you or otherwise shorten your life significantly even if all the cancerous tissue is eliminated.

Pretty awesome tech.
 
I lost my Dad to large-cell Glioblastoma (brain cancer) in February of 2008. He fought it for almost two years which is highly abnormal when something like 80% of patients with it don't make it past a year.

It's really exciting to see advances like this but I can't help but be a bit saddened... if that damned cancer had just waited a few more years he would have had so much more opportunity to possibly survive this god awful killer.


Not too long ago (a month ago?) there was a story making the news about a new experimental treatment for Glioblastoma where they remove some tumor cells from a patient, make a cultured vaccine from those cells, and then inject that vaccine back into the patient. It was highly experimental and I think the trial was only like 20 patients, but out of the 20 patients ALL of them were ALIVE one year later and more than that had NO signs of the tumors coming back. And Glioblastoma ALWAYS comes back.

Dad had his tumor removed three times. First time he came out of the surgery with basically all of his facilities intact - in fact when the tumor came back he was just getting ready to start driving again. Second surgery affected him more, causing some vision, motor control, and slight language difficulty. The third time the tumor had robbed him of the ability to speak or walk, and when they went to take it out it was the size of a grapefruit. He died a few weeks after that third surgery... :(

My heart just jumps a little whenever I read news stories like this. I truly hope there comes a day when we can stomp cancer out for good.

My Dad had just turned 48 when he was diagnosed, and was 50 when he died. Way too fucking young to die, in my opinion.
 
@ Blue Falcon: Sorry to hear about your loss. :(

Reading many of the posts in this thread, it reminds me why I participate in F@H. Sure, the 'contest' in numbers are fun, but at the end of the day I'm helping the scientific community in advancing research to solve issues just like these.

:(
 
Actually that trial was 8 patients, not 20. But as I said almost a year later and not a single one of them has had recurrence of Glioblastoma Multiforma.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2010/09/14/pkg.gupta.brain.tumor.cnn?iref=allsearch

GBM is a literal death sentence. They can cut all of the tumor out and it will come back in the same damned spot literally a few months later. Patients surviving a year without the GBM coming back is almost unheard of, in fact patients surviving a year AT ALL is pretty rare.

So yeah, as you can tell I'm pretty passionate about ALL of the doctors and researchers who are trying to come up with treatments for cancer. In my opinion not only should they be given all kinds of accolades for their work, but they can't be paid enough monetarily. Amazing people doing amazing work, and if you talk to some of these doctors it becomes quite evident that they honestly CARE about the people who are dying every day from cancer.

I'll shut up now... lol
 
This has always been a method for illness treatment that I've thought about a lot (after seeing some Sci-fi shows) where they cross multiple lasers to create a hotspot that fries whatever at that point. Then they use it to scan the entire body for virus particles and cancer cells etc, frying each one individually. Seeing this article makes me smile thinking that we are one step closer to that kind of technology.

Obliterating the problem molecules and letting the body gobble up the leftovers seems like it would have a high rate of success.
 
Blue Falcon said:
Actually that trial was 8 patients, not 20. But as I said almost a year later and not a single one of them has had recurrence of Glioblastoma Multiforma.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2010/09/14/pkg.gupta.brain.tumor.cnn?iref=allsearch

GBM is a literal death sentence. They can cut all of the tumor out and it will come back in the same damned spot literally a few months later. Patients surviving a year without the GBM coming back is almost unheard of, in fact patients surviving a year AT ALL is pretty rare.
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Yeah, this is great news. I did some mutation studies on Type I-III gliomas and astrocytomas through to Glioblastoma Multiforma. You don't think about it too much when it's DNA in test tubes, but every week or so, the post doc headed to surgery with a styrofoam bucket of dry ice to collect another tumour. You wonder whether the patient will make it... until you find out it's a Type IV and just get on with your work.

I'm sorry it's too late for your father, but maybe my co-worker's daughter--already blind from an inoperable tumour--can benefit.
 
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