As we age, brain tumor symptoms can be mistaken as dementia. They are:

numbness or tingling in the arms and legs

slurring of speech or vision problems

nausea or vomiting

changes in mood or ability to concentrate

You can see that a lot of the symptoms above look the same as dementia symptoms so it is easy to get a wrong diagnosis. a good doctor will not only take a physical exam but order tests like an x-ray, CT scan or MRI scan. It could be just swelling in the brain and not a tumor that is pressing on parts of the brain. The tests will be looking for a location of the tumor and also the size and type.

Brain tumor symptoms show up in people over  70 more often than younger people. People who have a family history of gliomas also are at a higher risk for brain tumors. People who work around radiation and chemicals also are at a higher risk. many people assume that brain tumor symptoms show up in from head injuries but studies have shown that this is not always so.

Brain tumors may not be primary tumors but metastasized from another cancer in the body.  Not all brain tumors are cancerous. In fact, non cancerous brain tumors occur more often in women and they are called meningiomas.  A third of the people who are diagnosed with brain tumors say that they were experiencing seizures before.

Most doctors will rule out other less severe conditions before determining whether the patient has a brain tumor or dementia. Age, family history, current symptoms and test results will all factor into a final diagnosis.

Even though brain tumor symptoms can be masked by dementia, it is good to have both ruled out.

Tags: brain tumor symptoms, dementia

This entry was posted on Monday, December 13th, 2010 at 2:20 am and is filed under brain tumor symptoms. you can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. you can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.