Brain Cancer
The Neuro-oncology Center at Roswell Park provides diagnosis, treatment, and symptom management for patients with tumors involving the central nervous system. This includes both benign and malignant tumors of the brain, spine and pituitary gland. The Neuro-oncology Center provides comprehensive care for brain tumor patients using a multidisciplinary team that includes several groups of medical specialists:
Neurosurgeons provide individualized surgical care using modern techniques including computer-assisted and image-guided neurosurgery, intraoperative MRI (iMRI), endoscopic skull base surgery, microneurosurgery, Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery and reconstructive spinal tumor surgery.
Radiation Oncologists treat brain and spine tumors with radiation therapy using a variety of different methods. These include: Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery, intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), fractionated focused radiation and whole brain radiation therapy.
Medical Neuro-oncologists specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of brain tumors using chemotherapy and diagnosis and management of the neurological complications of cancer and its treatment. In addition to chemotherapy, they treat brain cancer with biological therapies. During the treatment planning process, medical neuro-oncologists, radiation oncologists and neurosurgeons collaborate closely in order to arrive at the best overall treatment strategy.
Neuroradiologists and neuropathologists are other physicians who assist the treating doctors to rapidly and accurately diagnose the patient’s condition and evaluate ongoing response to therapy.
In addition, psychologists, nurse practitioners, nurse case managers, social workers and physical, occupational and speech therapists are an important part of the multi-disciplinary team that evaluates and treats patients with brain, spine and pituitary tumors at Roswell Park. These individuals support the physician treatment team and work to speed the healing process and ease the transitions that a patient may experience during tumor treatment.
