Dr. Justin Abbatemarco and Dr. Kait Nevel discuss tips and tricks for managing radiation necrosis in hospitals and outpatient settings.

Show transcript:

Dr. Justin Abbatemarco:

Hello, and welcome. This is Justin Abbatemarco, and I just finished interviewing Kate Neville about radiation necrosis following radiosurgery. Kait is a neuro-oncologist at Indiana University.

Kait, maybe we could just start with what this entity looks like and some tips and tricks on how we can manage in that hospital or in the outpatient setting when we were picking this up.

Dr. Kait Nevel:

Yeah. Radiation necrosis can present in a variety of ways. People with radiation necrosis can be completely asymptomatic. In fact, most patients with radiation necrosis are asymptomatic. But symptoms can include things like headaches, seizures, and then focal neurologic deficits related to where the radiation necrosis is located. Imaging-wise, radiation necrosis typically looks like necrotic enhancing lesion as the name implies. Typically, we look at certain anatomical characteristics on standard MRI like vague enhancement along the edges, et cetera, but perfusion can be very helpful including cerebral blood volume, which is typically low in cases of radiation necrosis and high in cases of tumor progression. But this is a really big challenge in neuro-oncology, and differentiating radiographically between tumor and radiation injury.

Dr. Justin Abbatemarco:

I would encourage people to listen to podcast. We talked a little bit about medications, how to dose dexamethasone and others, and how we think through that. So please jump on and take a listen, and then join us back for the next Neurology Minute. We're going to talk about some evidence for supplement use in this disease. So Kait, thank you.

Dr. Kait Nevel:

Great. Thank you.