You may continue to feel confused and dizzy, and have speech problems, weakness in parts of the body and seizures. You and your family or carers may be surprised that you may feel worse than before the surgery and worry that you aren't recovering well. These side effects are normal and often improve with time.
After your brain tumor surgery, you will likely spend the night in a neuro-critical care unit (NCCU) for observation. You may be connected to IVs, a heart monitor, a catheter and an oxygen mask. You will also have a dressing (bandage) on your head for a day or two.
Swelling in the brain after an operation means it will take some time before you feel the benefit from having your tumor removed. You may experience dizzy spells or get confused about where you are and what's happening. These episodes can come and go and are a normal part of the recovery period.
Some people recover well after brain surgery, but this can take some time. Other people have some problems, or long term difficulties. The problems you may have depends on the area of the brain where the tumour was (or still is if you only had part of the tumour removed).
Benign (non-cancerous) brain tumours can usually be successfully removed with surgery and do not usually grow back. It often depends on whether the surgeon is able to safely remove all of the tumour. If there's some left, it can either be monitored with scans or treated with radiotherapy.
The median survival for patients with low-grade tumors may be more than 10 years, and for patients with high-grade tumors, it ranges from 1 to 3 years.
Here are some basic survival rate statistics, as reported by the American Cancer Society: Oligodendroglioma - 90% for patients 20-44, 82% for patients 45-54 and 69% for patients 55-64. Meningioma - 84% for patients 20-44, 79% for patients 45-54 and 74% for patients 55-64.
Neurosurgery can cause some temporary swelling around the brain, so it's normal to experience memory loss after brain tumour removal or biopsy. You may also experience difficulties with your memory after brain surgery if surgeons had to remove brain cells that were responsible for your memory.
If a meningioma tumor is not removed completely, it is likely to regrow within 10 to 20 years.
How Long Does It Take to Recover After Brain Surgery? In total, it typically takes about 4-8 weeks to make a full recovery from a brain surgery. The initial incisions on your head may be sore for about a week afterwards. You may have some mild headaches for a period of about 4-8 weeks as well.
Neurosurgical resection of a brain tumour is a major life event that changes patients' subjective experiences of different emotions, and leads to observer-rated changes in personality. In this study, these changes were not accompanied by increases in anxiety or depression.
Postoperative coma is not uncommon in patients after craniotomy. It generally presents as mental state changes and is usually caused by intracranial hematoma, brain edema, or swelling. Hyperammonemia can also result in postoperative coma; however, it is rarely recognized as a potential cause in coma patients.
Depending on your age at diagnosis, the tumour may eventually cause your death. Or you may live a full life and die from something else. It will depend on your tumour type, where it is in the brain, and how it responds to treatment. Brain tumours can also be fast growing (high grade) and come back despite treatment.
Metastatic brain tumors can grow rapidly, crowding or destroying nearby brain tissue. Sometimes a patient may have multiple metastatic tumors in different areas of the brain.
Primary brain tumors begin when normal cells develop changes (mutations) in their DNA. A cell's DNA contains the instructions that tell a cell what to do. The mutations tell the cells to grow and divide rapidly and to continue living when healthy cells would die.
As with any brain surgery, awake brain surgery has the potential for risks and complications. These include bleeding, brain swelling, infection, brain damage or death. Other surgical complications may include seizures, muscle weakness, and problems with memory and thinking.
Tumor recurrence is always a possibility. If you are diagnosed with a recurrent brain tumor, you will want to consider how additional treatments can impact your quality of life as well as your survival.
Some brain tumours are cured with the first round of treatment. But unfortunately, it's common for brain tumours to come back some time after they were first treated. When a cancer comes back it's called recurrence. It can be a great shock to find out that your brain tumour has come back.
It is not possible for your doctor to know if or when your tumor will recur. Tumors often come back in the same spot as the original tumor. But it is possible for a brain and spine tumor to return in another location in the central nervous system (CNS).
Brain cancer survival rate
The average five-year relative survival rate for malignant brain tumors is 35.6 percent, according to the National Brain Tumor Society. This means that 35.6 percent of people who are diagnosed with brain cancer are still alive five years after their tumor is found.
Most are considered “benign” because they are slow-growing with low potential to spread. Meningioma tumors can become quite large. Diameters of 2 inches (5 cm.) are not uncommon.
MSK researchers looked at why glioblastoma brain tumors usually come back after treatment. Their findings suggest that a subset of cells — cancer stem cells — are able to evade current treatments because they are not actively dividing, and that these cells can later form new tumors.
If the brain tumor is located in a place that makes it accessible for an operation, your surgeon will work to remove as much of the brain tumor as can be done safely. Some brain tumors are small and easy to separate from surrounding brain tissue, which makes complete surgical removal possible.