How are brain tumors manifested in children?

1 Common signs of illness

What common symptoms and signs can occur in children suffering from this terrible disease? These include:

• problems with appetite, the appearance of a vomiting reflex and vomiting, which manifests itself, as a rule, in the morning and before dinner;
• severe anxiety following vomiting( usually in children under 2 years of age);
• irritable behavior and loss of interest in your favorite activities, games or traditional pastime;
• general disorder in behavior, behavior uncharacteristic for a particular child;
• sudden loss of strength, excessive drowsiness, general lethargy, apathy;
• seizures;
• total numbness of the entire body;
• visual disorders: unusual eye movement, older children can complain about blurriness of objects or their dilation;
• loss of orientation in space, which can be expressed in frequent falls, tripping, hitting objects while walking;
• strongly pronounced problems with the excretory system( the latter are often expressed as constipation or poor feces);
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• in children of infant age there is an increase in the size of the head.

As a rule, experts advise to beat the alarm with simultaneous presence of 3 symptoms from the above list. Single manifestations that do not occur simultaneously, often indicate that the child has much less health problems.

2 Symptoms and localization of

Symptoms may differ depending on the location of the lesions. In some cases, it helps diagnose in the early stages of the disease.

Tumors in the large and outer parts of the brain can provoke loss of movement control and cause numbness of one side of the body.

Intracranial tumors provoke frequent headaches and impaired coordination. A child under 4 years old can suffer from frequent nausea, constant weakness, lethargy, which is often accompanied by general irritability.

Tumors of the anterior part of the brain often cause disorders with the language apparatus and thinking. With such lesions, a complete loss of speech or hearing is not uncommon, a complete lack of speech skills.

Central neoplasms in the brain manifest themselves in the form of strabismus, non-standard movement of the eyes. Education on the back of the brain or in the pituitary area also causes damage to the optic nerves. Tumors localized in close proximity to other cranial nerves, provoke hearing loss, problems with swallowing reflex, coordination of facial muscles and balance.

Tumors of the brainstem manifest themselves in the form of abnormal gait, persistent headaches, strabismus. Tumors in the cerebellum lead to problems with coordination during walking or even during meals. A tumor that penetrates the basal ganglia is characterized by the presence of pathological movements and the position of the body. Tumor of the spinal cord causes numbness, general weakness, coordination problems, and also causes paralysis of the nerves of the skull.

3 Parents to note

Professional oncologists note that it is the regular increase in intracranial pressure against the background of morning headaches, frequent vomiting in the absence of nausea, a visual disturbance - this is the most frequent clinical manifestation of the brain tumor in its initial stages. Symptomatics directly depends on the growth rate of the tumor itself.

Rapidly growing formations make themselves felt before, when their size is still relatively small.

Initial signs of increased intracranial pressure are not specific. For older children, for example, junior schoolchildren, they are expressed in complaints about acute headaches, which make themselves felt by attacks, general fatigue, apathy. There is also a sharp decline in academic performance. Frequent headaches, until the final moment of diagnosis, can periodically be observed from 4 months to 6 months. Subsequently, these symptoms are often added to the disturbance of the look up. Children also exhibit increased irritability, a sharp decrease in intellectual and physical abilities, may develop anorexia and related problems in the normal functioning of the digestive system and excretory system.