KENDALL, Fla. – An advanced tool is improving the outcomes for people diagnosed with brain tumors.
Dr. Michael McDermott with Baptist Health’s Miami Neuroscience Center is working with an Food and Drug Administration cleared brain mapping device called Quicktome.
It allows doctors to analyze millions of data points derived from a standard MRI to gain insights into a patient’s unique neural pathways and avoid sensitive areas of the brain.
”What it allows me to do is pick the safest trajectory to a target that needs surgical treatment inside the brain and previously we didn’t know what the functional networks were or their location superficially in the brain or between the surface and the tumor target,” he said.
McDermott said brain mapping is becoming more important than ever before.
According to the National Brain Tumor Society, an estimated 700,000 Americans are living with a primary brain tumor and nearly 90,000 more will be diagnosed this year.
And according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, men are statistically more likely to die from cancer than women.
Along with prostate cancer, men are at greater risk of kidney and bladder cancer, too.
Many of those cancers can be treated if caught early.
Depending on a person’s age, yearly screenings may not be necessary but it’s important to have a good relationship with your primary care doctor so any health issues can be promptly addressed.