Brain Tumors Triple in Kashmir

Brain tumors have increased by threefold in Kashmir during the past 10 years, medical experts said here Saturday. Medical experts at Kashmir’s main tertiary hospital SKIMS, Soura said: “The incidence of brain tumours in Kashmir has increased by three fold during the last ten years – the reasons include improved ability of imaging modalities and aging population.” They said brain tumours were not uncommon in Kashmir. Each year hundreds of patients suffering from brain tumours are registered at Regional Cancer Centre of SKIMS Institute and managed effectively by the department of Radiation Oncology. Experts at the institute said SKIMS being a super specialty hospital, had been rendering treatment to patients suffering from brain tumours with its state-of-art infrastructure. “The department of Radiation Oncology in collaboration with the department of Neurosurgery has been providing multimodality treatment to these patients. Currently concurrent chemo radiation with the latest drug Temozolomide is being used to treat these patients,” experts said. “The results of the study at the Department of Radiation Oncology SKIMS presented at the seminar today has been encouraging and found to be at par with the results of other hospitals not only in India but abroad as well,” the experts said. The seminar was attended by faculty, postgraduates and resident staff. Director SKIMS, Dr Abdul Hamid Zargar expressed satisfaction over the performance of various departments engaged in the management of brain tumours. Neurosurgeon, Dr M A Wani; Medical Oncologist, Dr Mushtaq Ahmad; Dr Maqbool and Dr Ashraf elaborated on the role of surgery, gamma knife and chemotherapy in the management of brain tumours.