Q: The question is that surgery for brain tumour costs lakhs of rupees. Is it correct? If the poor people gets this disease, how can they go for such costly surgery? Please tell me, is there any hospital in India that can do the operation cheaply? Exactly how much money is required for this tumour treatment? Please advise.

A:The costs of treatment of brain tumour are variable and the factors that go into the costs are: 1. type and site of tumour within the brain, 2. the kind of surgery (biopsy, decompression of tumour / excision of tumour) 3. length of hospital stay, 4. Requirement of post surgical adjuvant treatment (eg radiotherapy / chemotherapy, the need for the same being dictated by the final histopathological diagnosis), 5. the type of hospital (government institute, medical college, corporate hospital, nursing home, etc). I do agree that these treatment modalities are very expensive in certain setups but one has to find a suitable place keeping in mind the factors that I have enumerated above. On an average, the surgery for brain tumour in a private hospital could cost between one to one and a half lakhs which includes about one week of hospital stay also. (Comment from DoctorNDTV: This surgery may be heavily subsidised or done free at government hospitals)