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Emma,
Brain radiation is not mesaured by days but by total dosage. It seems unlikely that your cousin could have received the total maximum dosage in only 5 days. Finland may have a lower treshold, but I am only speculating.
Generally WBR will be effective in taking care of most mets, but occassionally either a stubborn one exists or new individual ones will appear. Gamma Knife is used to treat individual tumors. Gamma Knife treats individual mets whereas WBR treats the entire brain.
There is a limit in theory on how much Gamma Knife treatment a person may get in their lifetime, but Christine's rad/onc who has been doing this for over 10 years has never had a patient who exceeded this dosage.
There are some exciting trials in this country that hopefully will be successful. Dr. Mark Pegram in Los Angeles is doing a trial of Herceptin/Lapatinib in combination and Dr. Winer in Boston is doing a trial using Lapatinib to treat brain mets.
Warmest Regards
Joe
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