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Advances in brain tumor research and treatment are bringing new hope to thousands of patients.

This is National Brain Tumor Awareness Week, and specialists in the field want to let everyone know that your chances of surviving a brain tumor have increased dramatically over the past few years.

This is National Brain Tumor Awareness Week, and specialists in the field want to let everyone know that your chances of surviving a brain tumor have increased dramatically over the past few years. Duke University Medical Center neurologist Dr. Henry Friedman says treatment centers around the country are throwing everything they have at the tumors.

"We clearly are increasing survival of patients -- children and adults -- with brain tumors,through using a multi-modality approach."

This multi-modality approach includes awake surgery where the patient can talk to the physician, therapy that allows the use of higher doses of radioactive iodine injected directly into the tumor, chemotherapy that shows promise in overcoming the tumor's resistance, new treatments that starve the cancer cells of nutrients, and the ever-increasing promise of developing an anti-cancer vaccine. Friedman says the toughest obstacle to overcome now is the pervasive belief that when someone is diagnosed with a brain tumor, there is no hope. He says this is simply no longer true. I'm Tom Britt.

Friedman says specialists are trying to get the word out that a diagnosis of a brain tumor is not an automatic death sentence.

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"As long as you believe there is hope and go to a place that tries to deliver that hope for you, I don't think anybody at diagnosis should assume there's simply a dead person waiting to be planted - which is what they're told."