I think it depends on which tumors we’re looking at and how we define success. Overall, about 75 to 80% of every brain tumor patient in a pediatric population is surviving at five years. This is a wonderful number. There are certain brain tumors that are truly inoperable and truly have survival levels closer to 0%, unfortunately. They’re not the most common, but they’re out there.
Where we need to be putting our efforts is in ensuring not only that we’re not dealing with mortality, but we’re also diminishing morbidity. And what I mean by that is our patients are not only surviving but thriving. When you have a tumor somewhere else in the body, it can often involve surgery, and the surrounding anatomy might be important and can be moved out of the way. But when you’re operating on the brain, it’s a whole other story. You have to be really careful when you operate on the brain to take the part of the brain that is abnormal and leave everything else as close to intact as possible.
When we talk to our neurosurgeons, they talk about how these surgeries are extremely long. You know, six hours, 12 hours, 18 hours. They’re moving very slowly. They’re working at the vascular level, working on these small vessels around the tumor, and then they’ve got to make the decision while operating how much to take, how much is safe, how much is going to give the best chance of survival.
