Andrea Carai: This year’s theme for World Brain Tumor Day 2024 is ‘Brain Health and Prevention’

Andrea Carai, Chief of Neurosurgical Oncology Unit at Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, shared the following post on LinkedIn:

“WORLD BRAIN TUMOR DAY 2024
Today is World Brain Tumor Day – with this year’s theme being ‘Brain Health and Prevention‘

Central nervous system (CNS) tumors are difficult to diagnose in children. Many factors contribute to this problem:
– the capacity of children to adapt to growing intracranial masses and not show significant #symptoms until the tumor has grown big;
– the difficulty in interpreting unspecific symptoms in toddlers and infants;
– the rarity of this condition supporting a low awareness for this diagnosis both among families and general practitioners.

A delayed diagnosis has not been found to correlate with shorter survival or lower chance of complete surgical resection; however. reports from the literature suggest that the longer the pre-diagnostic symptom interval the worse the long-term functional outcome.

A timely diagnostic suspicion is therefore unrenounceable to help preserve function in these children. Once a neurological function has been lost, it is very unusual to be able to regain that, and this has a significant impact on disability and quality of life for these children and their families.

Inequity of care is a big player in conditioning diagnostic delay, both in high income and in middle-low income countries.

Public health initiatives to support early diagnosis of pediatric brain tumors, such as done by the HeadSmart Initiative in the UK, are warranted to support awareness and dedicated diagnostic pathways and protect the brains of our children on which our future will be built.”

View the information attached to the post.
Source: Andrea Carai/LinkedIn