Leading-Edge, Compassionate Clinical Care for Brain Cancer at the Cedars-Sinai Department of Neurosurgery
The Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai brings together a multidisciplinary team of experts, advanced technologies and ground-breaking research to care for persons with brain cancer.
Under the direction of Keith L. Black, MD, the Department of Neurosurgery and its Cochran Brain Tumor Center offer a wide range of treatments and programs designed to serve patients, their families and physicians. These include the Gamma Knife Center, which provides a noninvasive alternative for patients for whom traditional brain surgery is not an option.
The Department of Neurosurgery also offers a full range of radiosurgery (surgery that uses radiation) options. Radiosurgery can be used to treat malignant tumors that are either inaccessible or were treated unsuccessfully by conventional surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. Cedars-Sinai is at the forefront of this field and has the first FDA-approved, three-dimensional software for use during radiation therapy.
Thanks in part to the research conducted here, today's patients have treatment options ranging from chemotherapy and radiation to prescription medications and surgery.
Patient-Centered Care
At the Cedars-Sinai Department of Neurosurgery, we recognize that a diagnosis of brain tumor can be unsettling for both patients and their families and loved ones. The Department of Neurosurgery has an extensive program for educating and supporting patients from coping with the initial diagnosis to guiding them through surgery to providing follow-up care and links to resources and support groups.
At the Frontier of Medical Research
The decoding of the human genome - the 100,000 genes encoded by 3 billion chemical pairs in our DNA - has ignited a medical revolution. The knowledge revealed by the human genome project has opened up exciting opportunities for innovative treatments for cancer and many other diseases.
Recent discoveries by scientists at the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute have generated excitement and hope for control of diseases that can devastate the body's most vital organ - the brain.
As the incidence of brain tumors rises - especially among children where brain tumors are now the leading cause of death from cancer - major clinical research efforts are underway to develop more effective treatments for brain tumors.
The MDNSI also works closely with researchers at Cedars-Sinai's Biophotonics Research and Technology Development Laboratory.
