Dr. Philip Stieg, founder and chair of the Weill Cornell Medicine Brain and Spine Center and president of the Brain Tumor Foundation, was honored to present to the annual meeting of the European Low-grade Glioma Network (ELGGN) in Bilbao, Spain, in June. Dr. Stieg’s presentation, delivered via videoconference, focused on the early detection of low-grade gliomas.
The ELGGN is a group of European physicians focused on the management and treatment of low-grade gliomas. The Brain Tumor Foundation (BTF), based in New York, is a non-profit organization that provides information and support to brain tumor patients and families and creates awareness about the need for early detection.
Through the BTF’s Road to Early Detection initiative, patients receive MRI screening for brain tumors in a mobile unit that has traveled to select cities in the United States. The scans are then read by a neuroradiologist at Columbia University Medical Center. Of the more than 500 scans performed over the past two years of the program, the program has identified four patients with previously undetected aneurysms, and one patient each with an acoustic neuroma, a pituitary tumor, and bone metastasis from prostate cancer. (The program has not yet identified a patient with a glioma, but given the incidence of glioma in the population, about 2,000 scans would have to be performed before such a tumor was diagnosed.)
A research component of the BTF initiative is working to identify brain tumor clusters in an effort to determine the causes of the tumors.
