The future role of neurosurgery in the care of cerebral tumors.

Diagnostic methods to discover a brain tumor and surgical techniques to remove it are steadily advancing. Most well-demarcated tumors can be removed by operation alone. Malignant, invasive tumors, however, will continue to offer a difficult and serious problem except when they are found while still very small in size, by elaborate diagnostic tools and except when they are conveniently located. For those tumors, surgery alone is not enough. Extermination of tumor cells by surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, etc., or combinations of these has achieved some results but with considerable limitations. We must search for the ways of peaceful coexistence with tumor cells, i.e., living with the tumor cells which are kept non-dividing and non-metastasizing by some means. Recent developments in oncology, such as discovery of c-onc genes, various growth factors, etc., give us some hope in the researches in this direction.