Each year more than 17,000 people in the United States find out they have a brain tumor. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has written this booklet to help patients and their families and friends better understand brain tumors. We also hope others will read it to learn more about these tumors.

This booklet describes the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of brain tumors. We know that booklets cannot answer every question about brain tumors. They cannot take the place of talks with doctors, nurses, and other members of the health care team, but we hope our information will help with these talks.

Words that may be new to readers appear in italics. Definitions of these words and other terms related to cancer can be found in the Glossary. For some words, a "sounds-like" spelling is also given.