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Can Brain Metastases Be Reversed?

Brain metastases are common types of intracranial tumors found in adult individuals. They affect more than 200,000 patients yearly.1 Melanoma, breast and lungs are the three primary malignancies, which cause you brain metastases. In addition, the problem takes place because of few other cancers, like colorectal cancer, renal cell cancer and gynecologic cancer.

Brain metastases have relations with advanced stage of cancer problems even though they take place during early stages of your cancer. Brain metastases frequency is increasing consistently because of long-term survival of various cancer patients, early detection and improved imaging modalities. However, in most of the cases, the problem remains incurable.

Can Brain Metastases Be Reversed?

Can Brain Metastases Be Reversed?

Reverse of your brain metastases condition depends on prognosis of the problem.

Prognosis of Patients via Radiation Therapy Treatment

Brain metastases in most of the cases involve poor prognosis. Even though medical science has undergone key advancements in both the diagnosis and treatment procedure of oncology, survival time of an individual undergone with radiation therapy has remained between 3 months and 6 months. Doctors may determine the overall survival based on activity and extent of any primary tumor.2

Prognosis of Patients via Steroid Therapy Vs Brain Radiotherapy

Steroid therapy in patients confers survival from 1 month to 2 months period. On the other side, in case of whole brain radiotherapy, lifespan extends to about 4 months.3

Prognosis of Patients via Chemotherapy

In case of chemotherapy, researchers and other experts have found that a majority of the chemotherapy-based agents often fail to cross BBB i.e. blood brain barrier. Accordingly, medicines do not penetrate one’s brain and in turn, fail to kill brain’s cancer cells effectively. Considering this fact, we should say that the change related to reverse of your brain metastases condition with chemotherapy is too much low, even though chemotherapy performs well in other parts of your body. For a majority of patients, brain metastases treatment centers on radiation and surgical techniques.4

Brain Metastases Condition Reverse depends on Primary Tumor’s Location

Besides this, whether your brain metastases reverse or not depend on the position of primary tumor. Accordingly, doctors have witnessed the best survival among breast cancer patients i.e. a median of 6 months to 22 months depending on the specific treatment, while worst scenario in metastatic gastrointestinal cancers or tumors i.e. a median from 2 months to 10 months.6

Causes Of Brain Metastases

Brain metastases take place whenever cancer cells pass through the lymph system or bloodstream from its actual tumor location and metastasize or spread to the human brain. Here, such cancer cells start multiplying and create complications. Metastatic cancer spreading from its actual location is the primary cancer. For instance, in case the cancer spreads from your breast towards your brain, experts call it metastatic breast cancer instead of calling it brain cancer. Until now, doctors have developed many theories related to prime causes about spreading of few cancers and the reasons, for which such cancers travel to the human brain.6 In general, experts may diagnose brain metastases take place due to lung cancer early during the problem, while metastases because of breast cancer often develop late.

Brain Metastases Risk Factors

According to experts involved in oncology studies, almost every type of cancer in patients may spread to their brain. However, if you have any one among the following cancer types, you remain at relatively higher risk related to suffering brain metastases.

Conclusion

To conclude, we should say that in most of the cancer conditions, once an individual develops the problem of brain metastases, his/her tumor becomes incurable. With the help of existing treatment procedures, patients thus may live only a few months. However, the life span in this case depends primarily on the exact number of brain metastases, extent of cancer and the specific type of tumor present in the body. In other words, reverse of brain metastases condition is very rare in patients.

References:

Team PainAssist
Team PainAssist
Written, Edited or Reviewed By: Team PainAssist, Pain Assist Inc. This article does not provide medical advice. See disclaimer
Last Modified On:February 2, 2022

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