[ad_1]
Young siblings Kalea and Noah Avery were both diagnosed with brain tumors of medulloblastoma a few weeks apart. Most patients of the disease are young children under 16 years old. ( Pixabay )
Two siblings aged four and six were diagnosed with the same type of brain tumor. What they have is the most common form of malignant childhood brain tumor.
Diagnosis of siblings
In late May, 6-year-old Kalea Avery vomited and experienced headaches the same week. When she was brought to the emergency, the doctors discovered a mass in her brain, which turned out to be a medulloblastoma, a rather aggressive tumor in the cerebellum.
In June, just a week after doctors diagnosed Kalea and removed his tumor. Surgery, his 4-year-old brother Noah, vomited, started walking oddly and complained of having pain in the same place where Kalea complained of pain. On June 21, an MRI revealed that Noah also had an even bigger brain tumor in the same place as his sister, and he too was diagnosed with medulloblastoma
What is Medulloblastoma?
Medulloblastoma is the most common form of malignancy. brain tumor in children, accounting for about 20 percent of all their brain tumors. This is a type of cancerous tumor that starts at the area of the brain that is at the base of the skull.
This is a condition that is slightly more common in boys than in girls and often in children under 16 years of age. Each year, 250 to 500 children are diagnosed with medulloblastoma and, although rare, it can also occur in adults.
Symptoms include headache, clumsiness, vomiting, and nausea that worsen gradually. However, if the tumor has spread to the spinal cord, the patient may also have problems with walking, bladder and bowel control, and back pain. Often, surgery to remove the affected brain mass is the first step in the treatment of medulloblastoma, followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy to remove the remaining tumor cells.
Survival rates among medulloblastoma patients vary according to the age of the patient as well as the degree of spread of the tumor. A patient may have a survival rate of 70 to 80% if the tumor has not yet spread and 60% has spread to the spinal cord. Often, children under three diagnosed with medulloblastoma have lower survival rates because the disease tends to be more aggressive.
Twin Diagnosis
In the case of Kalea and Noah, doctors were surprised that siblings were diagnosed with the same type of brain cancer in just a few days of each other. In fact, even though rare cases of siblings develop the same type of brain cancer, they do not occur at the same time.
According to doctors, tumors are unlikely to have been triggered by an environmental factor. It is more likely that the family has genes that make them more likely to develop brain tumors. In addition, they may have a genetic mutation yet to be discovered that makes children susceptible to these diseases.
Up to now, both children have been operated on to remove the tumor, and both have had a survival rate of 80 percent. According to their doctor, once the five-year survival period has passed, it is unlikely that cancer will return
30 Gadgets and Gifts for Father's Day 2018 Daddy Will Think of Being Rad
] © 2018 Tech Times , All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
[ad_2]
Source link
