Meningioma- follow ups?

[bodhigirl]

Hello, thank you for reading my post. I have been diagnosed with a meningioma in the frontal region which is quite small and has been there for several years, apparantly. How often should I follow up with MRIS? The radiologist suggests 3-6 months but my neuro hasnt mentioned FU. He said 'his mom had one the size of a grapefruit' before it was removed. I have intractable migraines at a rate of 2-4 per month associated with low pressure and bad weather. Neuro said no correlation to the meningioma b/c there is no mass effect. I do understand all this and the fact that less than 10% of meningiomas transform into malignancies.

How often should I get MRIs? Also, is there is correlation between meningioma occurance and hemangiomas of the spine?

God Bless, Trisha

[MLAustralia]

Generally these are very slow growing tumours (eg. I've had mine for 10-15 years before it was found due to some hearing loss). I would suggest scans every 6-12 months unless you have an increase in symptoms that might suggest it's faster growing. There are a small percentage that are more aggressive and an even smaller percentage that are malignant. The benign ones don't generally turn malignant. Malignant ones are a sub-set of meningiomas and represent about 2% of them but they're malignant from the start.

If they are near the skull they're not too difficult to remove surgically but some deeper in or at the skull base are more difficult. I'm using mifepristone (RU486) to control the growth of mine and that's working and I've had a small decrease in size.