son's thought provoking question

[Karla83401]

Happy St. Patti's Day everyone,

Last night my son and I were discussing my tumor, treatment, future plans and all that good stuff. I was telling him that I was not sure which surgery treatment I was going to chose and that I would base that decision on dr. reccomendations and research. Somehow we ended up discussing the size of the tumor question and he posed the following question to me..."why does the size of the in and of itself make such a difference, shouldn't the size of the person's head matter as much". I was not sure how to answer that because I had not heard anything mentioned about the size of my head in relationship to the tumor size. But what he said makes sense, someone with a larger head would not be impacted the same as a person with a smaller head, no matter what the size of the tumor. Does anyone have an answer to his question...I told him that I would ask.

Thanks,

Karla

[wanderer]

You aren't working with the whole head,  only the auditory canal and any space taken up if it leaves the canal.

The nerves run through the canal,  the larger the tumor the more chance of damage to the other nerves and the harder to get it out with out damaging the other nerves.

I believe there probably is some difference between people,  but I think doctors base their generalizations off of the size of the tumor to make it easier to understand.    If you have great outcomes with people who's tumors are under 1 cm then it's easy to tell someone with a 1 cm tumor that their chances are good.

But If you have terrible outcomes with people over 3 cm then you tell them the odds aren't real good and hope for better results than normal.   

Really they never know for sure what they will find untiil they open you up.

[HeadCase2]

Karla,
  I can see your point, someone with a larger than average noggin, may be able to house a larger AN.  But as far as surgical approach, the AN's location is one of the most important factors that a surgeon would consider.  The approach might be different for an AN completely inside the auditory canal, versus one that is outside the auditory canal and tucked into the cerebello pontine angle (closer to the brain stem).
Regards,
 Rob

[Boppie]

Recovering from the post treatment affects on the IAC nerves is enough in itself.  Graphics of the pontine angle space make that area look large.  It is not a large space.  A tumor in there hasn't far to go to touch that brain stem.