Surgical Therapy of Brain Metastases

Metastatic brain disease is probably the most common central nervous system complication of systemic cancer and is not a problem which lends itself to easy or simplistic answers. The treatment modalities avail-able include surgical excision, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy as well as combinations of all three methods. With very rare exceptions, surgery is restricted to those patients with single intracranial metastases whereas radiation therapy and chemotherapy are applicable to patients with multiple intracranial tumors.