Health in Focus: Benign Brain Tumors

A brain tumor isn’t always cancer, and it’s not always a devastating diagnosis.

Dr. Jay Jagannathan, with , explains how benign brain tumors affect the body.

“So when we think of tumor, we normally think of cancer,” Jagannathan says. “Which means it is a disease that can spread from one part of the body to the other and it is in these that the cells can divide quickly and can often grow extremely large very quickly.”

But a noncancerous brain tumor is an unexpected cluster of abnormal cells called a benign tumor.

They can’t spread to other parts of your body the way cancerous tumors do, but they can grow large enough to cause symptoms, Jagannathan says.

“It is important to know that they can be common,” Jagannathan says. “I mean, up to 25 to 35 or 30 percent of patients have some type of benign tumor present that they might not have known about their whole lives.”

Symptoms

• Headaches
• Nausea/Vomiting
• Hormonal Chages (Weight Gain/Loss, Libido changes)
• Visual Changes
• Hearing Loss
• Weakness

A lot of these symptoms are common, and don’t necessarily mean brain tumor. But Jagannathan says persisting body changes like these should lead people to getting medical attention.

“The important thing with benign tumors is that often times they can be treatable,” Jagannathan says. “But when they get extremely big, they can get a lot more difficult. So it is important that we catch them at an early enough stage.”

Treatment

• Observation
• Surgery
• Radiation (focused radiation vs. whole brain treatment)

For more health information, contact  for neurosurgery, neurology and interventional pain management.

Northern Michigan: 989-701-2538

Upper Peninsula: 906-253-1341

Southeast Michigan: 248-792-6527