Josh had an appointment with Dr. Harron on Monday. Everything looks good. The sutures are gone..well all but 2 are, she missed two. Dr. Harron strongly suggests that Josh get whole brain radiation to kill any micrometastases. Micrometastases are metastases that are too small to be seen. Dr. Harrons only concern is the brain can only handle 3000 centiGray before it suffers permenantly so they would give just under that amount of radiation meaning that he would no longer be able to have radiation on his brain…ever again in his life. However, if he had another tumor develop in his brain in the future they could give a small “booster” type radiation to that one spot but never again could he have whole brain radiation. Josh has a CT tomorrow and a doctors appointment with Dr. Schertz on Monday so this will be discussed.
Here is a really good website on whole brain radiation for anyone who is interested:
Brain radiation information
I also found another very interesting abstract article written by Indiana University about brain metastasis; here is a little bit of it.
Brain metastasis occurs rarely in patients with testicular cancer in the modern era where cisplatin-based chemotherapy regimens are used. The occurrence of brain metastasis can be synchronous or metachronous (with or without concurrent systemic disease). Long-term survival can be achieved in some patients. The vast majority of testicular cancer cases with brain metastasis reported in the literature involve nonseminomatous germ cell tumor and this subtype will be the focus of this review. This article reviews the literature of the diagnosis and management of brain metastasis from nonseminomatous germ cell tumor of the testis.
Josh has malignant non-seminomatous germ cell tumors.
This post was posted on Tuesday December 2, 2008 at 9:09PM
