(ARA) – Receiving the diagnosis of a brain tumor can be terrifying. Learning that the treatment needed to save your life may also cause serious side effects, including personality changes, memory loss, blindness or even paralysis can be equally as terrifying, if not more so. So what would you do?
Thousands of Americans face this dilemma each year; 210,000 people are diagnosed annually with primary brain tumors or metastatic brain tumors (cancer that spreads from other parts of the body to the brain), according to the National Brain Tumor Society. The American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) cites brain tumors as the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in children younger than 20, the second-most fatal type of cancer among men 39 and younger, and the fifth leading cause of cancer-related death in women 20 to 39.
A cancer diagnosis is always frightening even though advances in treatment mean many patients survive their disease and go on to live long, productive lives. For people diagnosed with brain tumors and brain cancers, the treatment – or more specifically its potential side effects – can be as frightening as the disease itself.
Standard radiation, one of the most common cancer treatments, can damage healthy tissue at the same time it is destroying cancer cells. When the target of the treatment is the brain, life altering, serious side effects can result. Radiation therapy can cause decreased intellect, loss of memory, confusion and even personality changes, according to the ABTA.
Karen Schabes, 22, of Chicago, was diagnosed with a form of brain cancer after she collapsed at work in June 2010. An MRI revealed her cancer. After having surgery to remove the tumor, Schabes was referred for radiation therapy but learned the position of her tumor, near her optic nerve, could mean the treatments would leave her blind. Concerned about the risk, she sought out another opinion.
Her neurosurgeon recommended she consider proton therapy. Schabes had heard about proton therapy on the radio and knew that a new proton therapy center had recently opened in the Chicago area. “I did my research and found out that the proton therapy beam is much more precise than standard radiation therapy for brain tumors. Less of my healthy brain tissue would be exposed to radiation so it was an option worth pursuing,” Schabes says.
Better precision means the cancer-killing radiation focuses on the cancerous cells, causing less damage to surrounding tissue. In the human brain, with its sensitive tissue and critical role in all our body’s functions, less damaged tissue means less risk of potentially life-altering side effects like vision or hearing loss, speech impairment, memory loss, personality changes and loss of cognitive functions.
Like standard X-ray radiation therapy, proton therapy kills cancer cells by preventing them from dividing and growing. Unlike X-ray radiation, protons deposit most of their energy directly in the cancer tumor, meaning brain tumor patients can receive higher, more effective doses, with less damage to surrounding tissue. Studies have shown proton therapy to be effective in treating a number of types of cancer including brain, central nervous system, gastrointestinal, head and neck, lung and prostate, tumors at the base of the skull and along the spinal cord as well as sarcomas and many pediatric cancers. Proton therapy is particularly preferred for treating children, because they are very sensitive to the side effects from radiation treatment.
Although proton therapy has been successfully used to treat cancers for decades, many doctors remain unaware of it because only a handful of centers in the U.S. offer the therapy – nine in all, with the new CDH Proton Center, A ProCure Center opening last October in suburban Chicago.
For Schabes, proton therapy not only gave her renewed hope of beating her cancer, it spared her eyesight. “Because of the location of the tumor – it was a frontal temporal tumor – traditional radiation would have passed right through my optic nerve, causing serious damage,” she says. “Instead of blindness as a possible side effect, which may have resulted had I been treated with standard X-ray radiation, I experienced only minor, transient side effects with proton therapy”
“I’m very thankful my doctor recommended proton therapy. I urge other patients to be sure they have looked into all their treatment options,” Schabes says. So far, follow-up MRIs have shown no sign of remaining cancer for Schabes. “It looks like I’m going to have a normal life.”