Abstract
Although many cancer patients develop brain metastases during the clinical course of their disease, many more are found to have cerebral secondaries at autopsy. Since even more patients do not have an autopsy the true incidence of brain metastases among cancer patients and indeed the general population can only be guessed at. A rate as high as 8.5 per 100.000 of the age-adjusted population has been reported (6) and it has been calculated that for some tumors the proportion of brain metastases in the terminal stages can be as much as 25% (7). For the oat cell type of bronchogenic carcinoma it is probably higher still and there is also a high incidence in breast cancer, melanomas and the acute leukemias, but brain metastases can arise from many tumors including those of the genito-urinary and the gastrointestinal tracts. They can even arise from soft tissue sarcomas and clearly any tumor which metastasizes to the lung can also metastasize to the brain.
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© 1984 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Hellmann, K., Greig, N. (1984). Chemotherapy of Brain Metastases. In: Piotrowski, W., Brock, M., Klinger, M. (eds) CNS Metastases Neurosurgery in the Aged. Advances in Neurosurgery, vol 12. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-69360-1_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-69360-1_17
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