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Millions of Americans suffer with disorders and diseases of the brain.  Each year, nearly 400,000 Americans experience a stroke, 150,000 of whom lose their lives and others face major long-term disability.  Alzheimer’s disease affects nearly 3 million Americans each year, leading to profound dementia and physical incapacity before death.  Some 2 million Americans suffer from epilepsy and 500,000 from Parkinson’s disease and other involuntary movement disorders.

Traumatic brain injuries can dramatically affect the lives of victims and their families.  In many cases, these injuries leave victims permanently disabled, or in need of months, and sometimes years, of rehabilitation and therapy.  In the U.S. brain injury results in more trauma deaths than do injuries to any other body region.  Brain injury incidence is highest in young people and the elderly.  Approximately 30-40% of moderate to severe head injury patients will develop an intracranial hematoma that requires an emergency craniotomy for evacuation.  Similarly, subarachnoid hemorrhages has been found to be an important factor in head injury victims that may be associated with poorer neurological outcomes when it is present. 

Brain tumor—the very word strike fear in the heart of anyone threatened with one.  It once was considered one of the most frightful events that could occur.  Today, however, with improving technology and the gradual unfolding of scientific understanding of the basic biology of brain tumors, patients and families can look to the future with considerably more hope.  The vast majority of brain tumors are primary, with meningioma being the most common.  Other tumors, such as the malignant astrocytomas and the glioblastoma multiformes are responsible for the bad reputation that brain tumors carry.  To date, the best treatment for these tumors is the “standard therapy” that involves the combination of surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy.