[Neurooncology]

Abstract

The central and peripheral nervous systems give rise to a variety of tumors which differ markedly in their incidence, age preference, and prognosis. The nervous system is also frequently affected by metastatic cancer. The major therapeutic options for tumors of the nervous system include surgical resection, radiotherapy using various strategies of fractionation, total dose, and target volume, and different approaches of chemotherapy such as systemic, intrathecal, and interstitial chemotherapy as well as high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell rescue. An increasing number of therapeutic options in neurooncology are no more merely palliative treatments, but may be curative, indicating that neurooncology is experiencing an era both of controversies regarding previous standards of care and of innovative strategies to combat tumors of the nervous system.