Patient Resources

A brain tumor diagnosis arrives with a name attached, and that name matters enormously. A meningioma and a glioblastoma are both “brain tumors” and they have almost nothing else in common. Start with the material for your specific diagnosis rather than with brain tumors in general.

This is the diagnosis patients and families find hardest to research, because the honest information is difficult and the dishonest information is everywhere. Both of these are written by people who treat this disease. Read the ABTA brochure first for the overall picture, then the National Brain Tumor Society piece for how treatment is sequenced.

Most meningiomas are benign and slow growing, and a great many of them never need to be treated at all. If yours was found by accident on a scan done for something else, that is a common story and usually a reassuring one. The AANS page is the most straightforward starting point.

When cancer from elsewhere in the body reaches the brain, treatment has changed substantially over the last decade, and much of what you will find written more than a few years ago is out of date. Radiosurgery in particular has replaced whole-brain radiation for many patients.

Pituitary tumors are usually benign, but they cause trouble in two very different ways: by pressing on the nearby optic nerves, and by producing hormones they should not. Which of those is happening determines whether the answer is surgery, medication, or observation.

Most spine problems get better without an operation, and most people who are offered spine surgery have time to think about it. The material below covers both halves of that: what the conditions are, and what the operations actually involve if you get there.

These animations run under two minutes each. They are meant to give you a picture of what is being described to you in the office, not to cover everything. If something in them does not match what you were told about your own operation, ask me, because the details vary by patient

A herniated disc pressing on a nerve root is the most common reason people come to see me with leg pain. It is also the condition where patience pays off most reliably: the large majority improve within a few months without surgery. Microdiscectomy is for the minority who do not, or who develop weakness.

Stenosis is a narrowing of the space the nerves travel through, and it produces a distinctive pattern: legs that ache or grow heavy after walking a certain distance, relieved by sitting or leaning forward. A laminectomy makes room. It treats the leg symptoms considerably better than it treats back pain, and that distinction is worth understanding before you decide.

Spondylolisthesis means one vertebra has slipped forward on the one below it. Some people have it for years without knowing, and some develop leg pain and difficulty walking as the slip narrows the space the nerves pass through. This is also the condition where the case for adding a fusion is strongest, because the segment is genuinely moving in a way it should not, and that can be demonstrated on bending X-rays rather than assumed.

Pain that runs from the neck into the arm along a particular route usually means a nerve root is compressed in the neck. Like its counterpart in the lower back, it often settles down on its own. Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion is the most common operation when it does not.

Fusion is the right operation for instability, deformity, fracture, tumor, and for a collapsed painful segment in a carefully chosen patient. It is the wrong operation as a default answer to back pain in a spine that simply looks worn on an MRI. If a fusion has been recommended to you, read these, then ask what specifically is being fused and why.

Most aneurysms found by accident are small, and most small aneurysms never rupture. The decision to treat one weighs its size, its location, its shape, your age, your blood pressure, and your family history against the risk of the treatment itself. That is a real conversation, not a formula, and it is worth having with someone who does this work.

The single most useful thing on this page may be the warning signs sheet below. Stroke treatment is measured in minutes, and the delay that costs people their recovery is almost always the delay before calling 911, not the one after. Learn BE FAST, and teach it to your family.

The name causes more confusion than anything else I treat. Stereotactic radiosurgery is not surgery. There is no incision and no anesthesia. It is a single, very precisely aimed dose of radiation, usually delivered in one outpatient session, and for several conditions it has become the treatment of choice rather than the fallback.

Start with the RadiologyInfo page, which walks through the day itself: what is placed on your head, what you will feel, how long it takes, and what to expect afterward. Most of the anxiety about this treatment comes from not knowing those details.

Radiosurgery is used for brain metastases, meningiomas, acoustic neuromas, trigeminal neuralgia, and some vascular malformations. This page from the radiation oncology society covers how it is used for tumors specifically, and how it compares with the alternatives.