Brain Cancer

The treatment options for brain cancer may include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, targeted therapies and steroid therapy, alongside new and evolving treatments through clinical trials. The type of treatment you receive will depend on several different considerations, such as the type of brain cancer you have, its stage, your overall health and your treatment preferences. This page aims to give you a comprehensive overview of how brain cancer treatment works in the private health system.

Radiation therapy treatment is a common treatment for brain cancer and is often given after surgery, as an alternative to surgery or alongside other treatments. There are many different radiation therapy techniques that may be suitable for your brain cancer.

Image guided radiation therapy (IGRT) is used to ensure EBRT is delivered as accurately as possible to your brain cancer. This involves the use of advanced imaging equipment and computer software such as MRI, CT and x-ray.

Stereotactic radiosurgery

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is a specific type of targeted radiation therapy that can be used to treat small benign or malignant (cancerous) brain tumours and tumours that can’t be treated with surgery or that have metastasised (spread to the brain from other areas of the body). Benign tumours which may be treated using SRS include meningiomas, pituitary adenomas and acoustic neuromas as well as some blood vessel conditions such as arteriovenous malformations.

SRS involves a special type of high-dose radiation therapy that targets affected areas in the brain while avoiding healthy brain tissue, and is usually delivered in one to five treatments.

At Icon Cancer Centre we use state-of-the-art technologies which can deliver SRS treatment to multiple brain tumours at the same time. This reduces the need to treat multiple tumours separately, resulting in a much shorter treatment time for patients. Listed below are two examples of software used to help deliver this advanced treatment. Other technologies may be used to treat multiple tumours, depending on the location of your treatment centre, but the software all work to achieve the best possible outcomes for patients.

• Varian HyperArc – HyperArc technology is available at Icon Canberra, Icon Greenslopes, Icon Gold Coast Private and Icon Maroochydore
• BrainLab Elements – BrainLab Elements is used at Icon Richmond and Icon Mulgrave

Stereotactic radiation therapy

Stereotactic radiation therapy (SRT) is an advanced technique used to treat malignant (cancerous) and benign tumours with well-defined edges in the brain. SRT is similar to SRS, but is usually delivered over a longer course of treatment and is more commonly used for larger lesions (tumours), especially those that are in sensitive areas of the brain.

Compared to traditional radiation therapy to the brain, which involves treating the entire brain, stereotactic radiation therapy only targets the individual tumours with high doses of radiation. This provides less radiation to healthy brain tissue, reducing the impact of side effects (e.g. loss of intellectual function, hair loss and headaches) and improving the quality of life for patients.