The length of a patient's survival after surgery for a brain tumor is most accurately predicted by answering one question. From residual tumor comes tumor regrowth. But the best way to evaluate whether surgery leaves behind residual tumor has no simple answer.
Brain surgeons themselves often make unreliable evaluations.
In an interview preceding the International Neurosonology '97 conference sponsored by the Bowman Gray School of Medicine of Wake Forest University, the lead researcher, Dr. Georg Becker, said that although both MRI and CT are more often used, transcranial sonography deserves a wider application. We also see transcranial sonography being used to differentiate complications like radionecrosis from complications like tumor regrowth. Sonographic scanners can be brought to a patient's bedside. It's easy to customize. Sonographic transducers, which fit in a person's palm, allow freehand scanning of the patient.