Observing the Effect of Patient’s Life Treatment
The standard for treating brain metastases back in 1954 was whole brain radiation therapy. The intent of whole brain radiation therapy is to help deal with cancer that spread to the brains by treating the whole brain, all of it, with radiation, whole brain radiation remained the standard of care for brain metastases. I observed that the effects of the cancer treatment were often worse than the disease itself with respect to the patient’s quality of life. Patients always had moderate to severe problems with brain function after treatment. How bad was it? Let’s say if they could balance their checkbook prior to treatment, they weren’t likely to be able to after. Other negative effects included memory problems, being able to understand, and other changes in how they were able to think and do things prior to treatment. The benefit of the cancer treatment was that the patients could live a few months longer but the downside was very significant. Fifty years later the standard for tr...