There Is A Senior At My School That Has Fourth Stage Brain Cancer. Is This Bad? How Many Stages Of Brain Cancer Are There?

you can check out www.webmd.com for information on brain cancer it tells you all types of medical info

Hello,

There are a lot of details that will affect the exact answer you are giving. I will outline a few below, but if the senior is a close friend of yours, then he/she should talk in some detail with his/her (I will just type "he" or his from now on) oncologist to get all the details explained.

The first detail to know is what is the primary site of the cancer. If the primary site is within the brain (i.e. true brain cancer, that is not found anywhere else in the body), then the "stage" of the cancer does not apply. Rather the "grade" is the important features. (Stage refers to the degree of spread of the cancer, while grade refers to how aggressive the cells are.) For brain cancer, grade is on a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 being the most aggressive. If your friend has a grade 4 brain cancer then this is VERY serious. It is difficult to estimate the average survival with this grade for an individual of high school age (is this a high school senior?) but if we compare to the average expectancy for 50 year olds, then with all aggressive treatments, the median life expectancy is about 14 months. This can vary greatly however, as some people will live only weeks and a few can live more than 2.5 years.

If this is a primary tumour that started somewhere outside the brain, but has now spread to the brain (this is not truly brain cancer, but rather cancer of the _______ with metastases to the brain) then this would be correctly called stage IV cancer. Stage 4 usually will refer to cancer that has spread to a distant site. In this case the prognosis is generally very poor, with a very short life expectancy, however there are some exceptions. The most noteable of this, is one of the most cmmonly found tumoursin young males, and that is testicular cancer, which has the best prognosis of any cancer. If your friend has testicular cancer with brain metastases, then prognosis can actually be relatively good witha >50% chance of cure.

In short, many details need to be determined before you can say for certain how dire things are. Despite this, any cancer within the brain or spine is always very serious, despite the variability in prognosis.

Hope this helps.

yes it is bad

Yes, it's bad. Cancer is staged to determine the extent of the growth and the prognosis (expected future of the patient). The stages are 1, 2, 3, and 4. Four is the worst. This poor kid is on death watch, and may not be around to graduate.

Count your blessings.
"There, but for the grace of God, go I."

omg....so wats happening???

it is bad
i think fourth stage is the last stage and if it is then he doesnt have much time left

Type it into google.com and get some legit medical info. We'd be guessing here.

there are 4 stages and stage 4 means it is inoperable...which means the dude will die. sorry.

i'll be thinking of you...if it's real

it means hes gonna die!