This "brain killer" is difficult to cure!

I am a neurosurgeon. Ordinary people sometimes confuse nerves with spirits because we often say that a person has a mental illness.

In fact, the neurological disease that everyone talks about is called mental illness in medical terms. Neurologists treat some diseases of the brain, spinal cord, central and peripheral nerves. Neurosurgeons use surgical methods to treat diseases of our nervous system.

The brain is the most mysterious organ in the human body, and we are always on the way to understand it. We all know about artificial intelligence and brain-computer interface. In fact, we just want to further extend and develop the intelligence of the human brain through artificial intelligence. We also hope that our brain can not only command our own body, but also command some artificial peripheral devices. But if such an important organ grows a tumor, you can imagine that it actually causes great harm to our human health.

The weight of our brain is only about 2% of the body weight. In other words, if a person weighs 50 kg, the weight of the brain may be only about 1 kg. Although this 1 kg accounts for a small proportion, every time the heart pumps out one-fifth of the blood, 20% of the blood goes to the brain. So this tissue and organ is very important.

The most common brain tumor

In 2022, the "China Cancer Report" published the incidence of tumors in China in 2016. Why was the incidence of 2016 published in 2022? Because epidemiological surveys are very complicated, they will definitely be published 5 years later. In the 2022 cancer report, you can see that brain malignant tumors only rank 10th and 9th among all tumors in terms of incidence and mortality. But you should know that this incidence is not low, equivalent to 1% of body weight, and it has serious disability and mortality rates.

So, today I will tell you what is the most common malignant brain tumor?

Many people have heard of the name glioma. It is the most common malignant tumor among our brain tumors. Probably 80% of malignant tumors can be classified into a cluster concept called glioma, because glioma is divided into some detailed pathological categories. In other words, brain tumors now cause high disability and mortality rates, and glioma may be largely responsible.

The main treatment for brain tumors is comprehensive treatment with surgery as the main method. Therefore, the first step for any malignant brain tumor is surgery, which aims to reduce the tumor burden, eliminate life-threatening conditions, and create an opportunity for subsequent treatment.

Other treatments for brain tumors

Radiotherapy is actually a kind of physical therapy in essence. The radiotherapy that everyone knows, such as X-ray therapy, gamma knife therapy, and some proton knives or neutron rays or heavy ion rays that everyone has known in recent years, are also physical therapy.

Chemotherapy is actually very difficult in brain tumors. Currently, conventional cytotoxic drugs are extremely scarce in the chemotherapy of brain tumors, and there are only a few rare drugs for targeted therapy. A few drugs like regorafenib and larotrectinib are effective against individual tumor types and individual molecular targets. Most of the targeted drugs used in other parts of our body, including some other immunotherapy methods, have all failed in brain tumors. Therefore, brain tumors are almost a desert of new treatments. This also comes from the particularity of this organ, which I will mention to you below.

It is not that Chinese doctors do not work hard, nor that doctors all over the world do not work hard. We work hard, but even so, the median survival of malignant glioma is only 14.4 months, in other words, just over a year, and the 5-year survival rate is 5%. What does this mean? With the development of new treatments, the five-year survival rate of many tumors has increased. Only our glioma has the lowest five-year survival rate among all human tumors. So I will take glioma as an example and introduce the application of electric, acoustic, and optical black technology in glioma. Because we have a greater responsibility and obligation to develop some new ways of tumor treatment to ultimately conquer human glioma.

Source: This article is based on a speech by Yang Xuejun (Director of the Department of Surgery and Director of Neurosurgery at Beijing Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital affiliated to Tsinghua University) at the Starry Sky Forum