WASHINGTON — Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the lion of Senate liberals, has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, doctors announced Tuesday, and if he has the worst subtype, he may have less than a year to live.
Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital said the 76-year-old senator, who has served in the Senate since 1962, has suffered no additional seizures since a weekend incident that landed him in the hospital.
Dr. Lee Schwamm, vice chairman of the hospital’s department of neurology, and Dr. Larry Ronan, Kennedy’s primary care physician, said preliminary results of a biopsy identified the cause of the seizure as a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe, a region of the brain that helps govern sensation, movement and language.
Noting that “the usual course of treatment includes combinations of various forms of radiation and chemotherapy,” the doctors said decisions about his care will be finalized after further testing. Kennedy will remain in the hospital for at least a couple of days.
They did not mention surgery, a possible indication the tumor is inoperable.
Seizures can be caused by a wide variety of things, some of them relatively minor. The finding of a brain tumor — and specifically a glioma, an especially lethal type — was about the worst possible news.
Malignant gliomas are diagnosed in about 9,000 Americans a year. In general, half of all patients die within a year.
“It’s treatable but not curable. You can put it into remission for a while but it’s not a curable tumor,” said Dr. Suriya Jeyapalan, a neuroncologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
An Associated Press photographer who was given access to the senator on Tuesday captured Kennedy joking and laughing with family members in a family room at the hospital.
Kennedy’s wife since 1992, Vicki, and his five children and stepchildren have been at his bedside.
Kennedy, the Senate’s second-longest serving member, was re-elected in 2006 and is not up for election again until 2012. Were he to resign or die in office, state law requires a special election for the seat 145 to 160 days afterward.
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