ANA Discussion Forum
Treatment Options => Radiation / Radiosurgery => Topic started by: tinkin3 on December 15, 2016, 02:04:54 pm
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Hello everyone!
This is my first post. I've been recently diagnosed with an 8.8 mm AN, which is not huge, but it's causing me huge problems (rapid hearing loss, very loud tinnitus, pressure, balance). I've had all these symptoms for the past two years, except the hearing loss, which seemed to happen overnight and prompted my ENT to do the MRI. I was referred by my ENT to Dr. Kim at Georgetown. I met with him last week, and he seemed to be very thorough. With my situation, he recommended surgery vs. radiation or WW, and told me that there is a 50% chance he can save my hearing. I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with him? I am having more tests done in January (more hearing tests, balance, ABR?) and then am to meet with him and the neurosurgeon (Dr. Anaizi). Appreciate any input you can give me.
BTW - I do plan to send my records to House once I have the updated hearing and balance tests just to see what they say.
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tinkin3, welcome to the club that nobody wants to be a member of, but everyone is nice.
At 8.8 mm your tumor is small. When you say rapid hearing loss, do you know your Pure Tome Average (PTA) and word discrimination score. It's nice to get quantitative figures for these. Also, follow up with another test in a month to see how it is progressing. (I do formal hearing tests monthly.)
As you know, you have three treatment options; open surgery, radiosurgery and observation. For you, I guess the key criteria would be hearing preservation. I would certainly be talking to a neurosurgeon and a radiosurgeon and ask them what the probability of hearing preservation is. Be careful, radiosurgery may have impressive figures two years out, but what you rally want to know is what he figures are likely to be 10 years out. Also inquire about what is likely to happen to hearing if observation were chosen.
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I went to Dr. Lim at John Hopkins for my surgery. Definitely not a big fan of my AN, but John Hopkins was amazing.