What treatment is available for an individual diagnosed with an ependymoma?
Currently, the standard therapy for a low-grade ependymoma includes total surgical excision followed by radiation therapy. Complete surgical resection is often not possible due to tumor location and concerns about damaging the surrounding eloquent brain during surgery. The situation is even more critical for patients with anaplastic ependymoma because of the higher proliferative (growth) rate and greater propensity for tumor infiltration into the surrounding normal brain, preventing any possibility of complete tumor removal by surgery. For patients with the more aggressive anaplastic ependymoma, chemotherapy is often administered either before or after the radiation in the hope that infiltrating tumor cells will be eliminated. See our Treatment section for more details.
