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How many people have had regrowth.. AN"s

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lmurray69:
I am courious how many people have had regrowth? This is very alarming to me..Are the DR.'s not getting all the tumor or are they new ones that have showed up...

palms0@hotmail.com:
Hi my husband had surgery on 7-20-06 retrosigmoid to remove a 9mm an VERY SMALL and it seems from the 1st night post op there is a 4-5 mm enchancing area  >:( the op reort says the tumor was removed BUT the dr feels part was left behind HOW CAN THIS BE WHEN IT WAS SO SMALL TO START????? i feel the dr did not get it all but WHY and this was never mentioned to us i found out by getting a copy of the mri report he has had an mri every 3 mos since surgery

it's really scary to think these things are not being totally removed, if we did not want it totally removed we would have opted not to do surgery in the first place. he just had another mri on good friday and now we wait till wed to see the dr again. i agree something seems very wrong.. are they really regrowths or just pieces left behind in the 1st place that the dr's are trying to claim are regrowths to cover their mistakes???? >:(
i can see with larger an's leaving some behind to preserve function but this is not the case for my husband.

Jim Scott:
My neurosurgeon said that it's very difficult to be positive a surgeon has removed every single cell of AN tumors, especially large ones.  This is why he has adopted the two-tiered approach for large tumors, like the one I had.  He surgically 'de-bulks' the tumor- using the retrosigmoid approach in my case -  down to a smaller size (again, in my case from 4.5 cm to about 2.8 cm) then he and a radiation oncologist 'map' FSR treatments to kill the remaining tumor's cells and avoid 'zapping' facial nerves while doing so.  Both doctors stated that they have seen zero re-growths of AN tumors treated in this manner over the past 5 years.  Its certainly worked out well for me. 

Granted, I'm only 10 months post-surgery and 7 months post-radiation but my last MRI (in December '06) showed the beginnings of necrosis in the remaining tumor. I have another MRI scheduled for the end of this month and I'm almost looking forward to it.  I realize that acoustic neuroma tumors are problematic in many respects and no one guarantees anything but, as my signature says: 'so far, so good".  :)

Jim

nancyann:
Geez,  I'm not having my 1st post-surg. MRI until 1 year out.    I had one the day after surgery & was told they got the whole tumor.
          I'm not looking foward to another one -   I'm so sorry this is happening to your husband Palms.  I don't know what to say....

Jwh:
Hi,

I was just diagnosed with a regrowth!!  I had the retro surgery done in 2001.  The doctor told me he removed the whole tumor (1.2 cm).  Now it looks like he didn't remove it all - looks like residual tumor regrowth.  At my 3 month MRI there was enhancement of 4 mm ( I was never told that).  Now I'm looking at the Translab surgery in the future.  I thought after my first surgery that I would go on my merry way and not give it another thought - I guess not!

Jen

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