The brain surgery Sen. Edward Kennedy underwent Monday was not intended to cure the senator’s malignant brain tumor, area doctors said.
“It won’t affect a cure of the tumor — it will slow it down and allow the radiation and the chemotherapy to be more affective,” said Dr. Anthony Caputy, chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at George Washington University Hospital.
“The smaller the tumor is before you start the other treatments, the better it will be,” he said.
Dr. Walter Jean, director of surgical neuro-oncology for Georgetown University Hospital, said that the type of tumor Kennedy has often features microscopic nests of cancerous cells far removed from the tumor’s bulk.
“You would have to take out a huge amount of brain to remove almost all of the cells, and that’s not practical,” Jean said.
Kennedy was awake but sedated during the surgery at Duke University, a technique Jean said would have helped his doctor to avoid cutting into critical brain areas that control motion and speech.
Kennedy’s doctor likely placed probes on the senator’s brain and asked him to speak or move to pinpoint which locations controlled those functions, Jean said.
At the time of his diagnosis, Kennedy’s doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston did not mention surgery as a treatment option.
“This is pure speculation, but it could have been just the surgeon’s preference,” Jean said. “One surgeon’s opinion could have been that the operation is too risky. To some people, the risk is worth taking, to other people, it’s not.”
Dr. Allan Freidman performed the surgery at Duke University, but Kennedy will undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatment at Massachusetts General.
