David J. Daniels, M.D., Ph.D.: It's hard as a parent to hear the news that your child has a brain tumor. What I tell my families is that we're going to take good care of your child. That is our number one goal.
Jonathan D. Schwartz, D.O., M.P.H.: One of my favorite parts of taking care of children is coming into a room of worry, and here's what we're going to do to get your child better.
Dr. Daniels: Parents should take their children to Mayo Clinic for the simple reason that we have some of the best outcomes in the world. We have experts at every part of the brain. There's no tumor really that we can't tackle. We routinely get patients referred to us for tumors that are being told are inoperable. We can assemble some of the world experts in a very expedited fashion to be able to offer surgery that other places can't offer.
Dr. Schwartz: A lot of our second opinions, over a quarter, have a different pathologic diagnosis when they come to Mayo. So getting the diagnosis right in the first place allows us to make sure we're doing the right thing. We've learned at Mayo Clinic that it's not always the right decision to rush children into surgery. There are a subset of tumors that we are able to treat with therapies that don't even require an incision.
Proton beam radiation is one of the most significant advances that we have because we're allowed to minimize the side effects and injury to healthy tissue. You're able to spare hitting the heart, the lungs, essential organs that don't need radiation because there's no disease there. There's a lot of new transformative changes to improve the quality of life, to minimize the side effects, medicines that are now allowing children to be treated successfully without losing their hair, without feeling sick. And that could include fertility preservation so that children can have a family of their own when they're older. A lot of us are all parents, and I think we all take this very personal and say, if this was our child, this is what we would do and why we would do it.
Dr. Daniels: The best part about my job is seeing patients do well. Having a parent give me a hug five years from now and say, you cured my child. That's it.