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Why Brain Cancer Can Be So Hard To Treat

The death of Beau Biden this weekend came with a reminder of how little we know about brain cancer. Although treatments have advanced and survival has improved, it remains one of the toughest diseases to beat. And it's a scary diagnosis that often lurks in the mind of patients with headaches or unusual symptoms involving the head.

Although little information was released about Biden's specific type of cancer, it's assumed he had what's known as a glioblastoma, a family of cancers that can be particularly hard to treat.

The most aggressive forms of this type of cancer leaves an average life expectancy of about 15 months -- with milder forms averaging up to 10 years.

It's reported that Biden was first diagnosed and treated for a brain tumor in 2013. The typical treatments involve surgery, radiation, and then chemotherapy.

Here is some other information about the disease:

About 22,000 new cases are diagnosed this year, with about 3000 developing in children.

It does not rank in the top ten most common cancers in the U.S.

The most common:

Breast cancer 234,000 new cases in 2015

Lung                 221,000

Prostate          220,000

Colorectal       133,000

Melanoma       73,000

It is on par with ovarian cancer -- also near 22,000 new cases

Men tend to get brain cancer more frequently than women.

Brain cancers do not spread, yet cancers in other parts of the body can spread to the brain.

Unlike other cancers, we do not know of definite risk factors for brain cancer. Family history may play a role, but minimally. Environmental chemicals and radiation have been investigated as triggers.

Symptoms generally depend on the location of the tumor, and what parts of the body that area of the brain controls.

Headaches are common -- yet tend to be severe, and worst first thing in the morning

Seizures can often be the first sign of a tumor.

Balance problems and double vision can also be early symptoms.

Now what makes this cancer so hard to treat is the fact that small tumor cells can survive treatment, and be undetectable until months or years later.

In other words, you can have surgery to remove the tumor, radiation to kill off what you might have missed, then chemo to finish things off. Yet special scans such as MRIs and PET scans can miss any cancer cells that survive the barrage of treatment only to show up later in some other part of the brain.

Yet progress continues to be made in the treatment of brain tumors, even though at a slow pace. The most promising new treatment involves using the body's own immune system to destroy the cancer -- so there is optimism among cancer specialists from this and other potential treatments.

For more information: cancer.net/cancer-types/brain-tumor

Dr. Dave Hnida is CBS4's Medical Editor. He blogs about the latest studies and trends in the health world. Read his latest blog entries, check out his bio or follow him on Twitter @drdavehnida

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