Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Treatment


Surgery is often recommended to remove the tumors.  Some NF1 tumors may become cancerous, and treatment may include surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. Surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy also may be used to control or reduce the size of optic nerve tumors when vision is threatened.  Some bone malformations can be corrected surgically.
For NF2, improved diagnostic technologies, such as MRI, can reveal tumors as small as a few millimeters in diameter, thus allowing early treatment. Surgery to remove tumors completely is one option but may result in hearing loss. Surgery also can correct cataracts and retinal abnormalities.
There is no currently accepted medical treatment or drug for schwanomatosis, but surgical management is often effective.  Pain usually subsides when tumors are removed completely.  Genetic testing is available for families with documented cases of NF1 and NF2 but such testing for schwannomatosis currently does not exist.  

 Kourea HP, Orlow I, Scheithauer BW, Cordon-Cardo C, Woodruff JM (1999) Deletions of the INK4A gene occur in malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors but not in neurofibromasAm J Pathol 155: 1855–1860. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
Holtkamp N, Malzer E, Zietsch J, Okuducu AF, Mucha J, et al. (2008) EGFR and erbB2 in malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors and implications for targeted therapyNeuro Oncol 10: 946–957.[PMC free article] [PubMed]


3 comments:

  1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=neurofibromatosis

    Take a look at this link to see publications on neurofibromatosis. See me for help getting articles.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is a really interesting topic. Most pictures that I see in regards to nuerofibrosis show tumors on the outside of the body. How do these tumors differ from cancerous tumors?

    ReplyDelete
  3. wow this topic is interesting. I saw a person with neurofibrosis once but i didn't know what it was called then. Are the tumors painful? And can they be hereditary?

    ReplyDelete