New technology helps tumor surgeries

DETROIT, April 15 (UPI) -- U.S. surgeons say new imaging tools are improving their ability to remove all of a brain tumor without affecting vital brain functions like speech and movement.

Improved MRI tools are helping them determine whether they've successfully gotten the entire tumor or need to go back and remove more, the Detroit Free Press reported Friday.

Before, surgeons feared damaging key brain structures and often did not operate aggressively and had to leave traces of the tumors behind, the newspaper said.

The Hermelin Brain Tumor Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit is the first facility in Michigan with the new imaging technology.

"This is an entirely new frontier for treating these tumors," said Dr. Steven Kalkanis, the center's co-director.

The imaging improvements give surgeons more visual information before and during operations so they can remove nearly all of a tumor and increase survival rates.

"Clinical studies show if we get 98 percent or more of the tumor out that puts the patient into a very different prognostic class," Kalkanis said.

Henry Ford Hospital spent $6 million for the new magnetic resonance imaging machine and operating suite, making it the hospital's costliest machine, the Free Press reported.