Swimmer’s Tumour Diagnosis Highlights Radiotherapy Role
Brain tumours come in many forms and the methods of treating them can vary in all sorts of ways. For some, the tumour is non-cancerous and can be managed, but for others the most serious treatment is needed to prevent an inevitable death from brain cancer.
While some can have all or part of a tumour excised through invasive surgery, this is not always possible, because the tumour can often be located on a part of the brain where the use of surgical instruments would cause fatal damage to the surrounding tissue. At this point, only non-invasive options remain, such as radiotherapy.
Swimmer Reveals Diagnosis
An individual who now finds himself in this situation is Scottish swimmer Archie Goodburn. The 23-year-old, who represented Scotland in the 2022 Commonwealth Games and narrowly missed qualification for this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, has gone public with his diagnosis of three large oligodendrogliomas, a form of cancer affecting both the brain and spinal cord.
He began having unusual symptoms in December last year, revealing via his Instagram account: “They would leave me with a loss of strength and a numb sensation on my left side, a deep feeling of fear, nausea and extreme deja vu. I now know that these were in fact seizures.”
Once the Olympic trials were over, he had an MRI scan and established the cause of his problems. The diagnosis itself was bad enough, but so too was the news that the nature of the tumours made them inoperable.
However, they can be effectively treated by a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. This was a point that Mr Goodburn was quick to note in his post, stating: “The silver lining to this diagnosis is that oligodendrogliomas generally respond better to radiotherapy and chemotherapy than many other serious brain tumour types.”
Oligodendrogliomas Explained
Oligodendrogliomas account for around three per cent of all brain tumours. They are primary tumours that originate in the brain rather than spreading from elsewhere in the body, a factor that makes it impossible to safely excise them.
It is very rare for anyone to be cured completely of these tumours, so their prognosis depends primarily on the kind of oligodendrogliomas the patient is suffering from, while the exact symptoms will depend on which part of the brain they are growing on.
Grade II is a slow, moving tumour and the average survival time after diagnosis is 12 years. An anaplastic grade III tumour is much more aggressive and the typical post-diagnosis survival time is only 3.5 years.
In his post, Mr Goodburn said the tumours are “slow growing and are likely years old,” which appears to indicate they are grade II, giving him a better chance of longer-term survival.
Radiotherapy may be particularly effective in slowing down and even shrinking the tumours, and it may be that it does more than simply extend life in this case, as research is taking place into other therapies that may have a transformative effect in due course.
A New Hope?
Writing about these, the swimmer noted that in his case the tumours “express a mutation of my IDH1 gene that is shared with some forms of leukaemia.” with IDH inhibitor drugs seeing “phenomenal developments” in recent years, which offers the possibility of the emergence of transformative treatments that could radically improve his prognosis.
This highlights a major hope for many people who are suffering from brain tumours, even ones that cannot be operated on. Radiotherapy can do more than just reduce symptoms and buy time to allow patients to live for longer. In some instances, they may allow people to survive long enough to benefit from an emerging new therapy.
Whether this will be enough to cure the tumour completely in the case of Archie Goodburn or at least enable him to live normally and continue his competitive swimming career will depend on the success of attempts to advance IDH inhibitors, but it does show that there is at least hope.
Why Patients Should Take Courage
Furthermore, it shows that if you are a patient who is facing the prospect of radiotherapy, whether by gamma knife or any other method, the side effects you may suffer, ranging from tiredness and skin irritation to emotional effects and a loss of appetite, will be worth it.
Depending on the kind of tumour, the treatment may bring a full cure, combine with other treatments (including in cases where surgery is an option) to deal with the problem, or at least give you many more years of life that might not have been possible before the development of modern radiotherapy.
In addition, it may just be that you could benefit from gaining extra years so that you can benefit from the emergence of new treatments.
