When you enter Boca Raton Regional Hospital, you are fully aware of the community support this institution has gained from local community leaders from Florida.

We sat down with Dr. Frank Vrionis, a Kalamata Greece born Neurosurgeon and Director of the Marcus Neuroscience Institute at Boca Raton Regional Hospital, in one of his operating rooms where he performs life saving brain surgeries for a wide variety of cancer patients.

Our in depth interview allowed us to understand how cancer can move from one part of the body to the brain to form different cancers such as medulloblastoma and glioblastoma.

To hear a diagnosis of a brain cancer has to be one of the most frightening moment for someone to endure. Dr. Vrionis explained why these cancers are so difficult to treat with traditional therapies, such as chemotherapy. Quite often surgery is needed to remove the tumors which have grown near the brain or the spine. Dr. Vrionis showed us how new equipment such as the 3D instrument of Olympus Orbeye was created for these complicated surgeries to display a large image on a special flat screen monitors in the OR room while Dr. Vrionis wears 3D glasses to see all aspects of the surgical area while adjusting the moveable hand held microscope.

Besides discussing our medical direction with cancer treatments, Dr. Vrionis also shared his thoughts a wide range of issues from life style, environmental toxins we ingest, and one of the more complicated subjects of financial toxicity and the high costs of cancer treatments for patients and families.

After filming with Dr. Vrionis we were able to meet and film with two of his patients who both have relied on Dr. Vrionis’s extraordinary surgical skills to remove tumors for cancers that had spread from other parts of their body.

Gene Evans, originally diagnosed with kidney cancer, learned that his cancer had embedded itself into his spine. Dr. Vrionis ended up doing three surgeries on Gene’s spine over time to remove the cancers tumors. With Melanie Ginther, after treating breast cancer and being told she was all clear, found herself through a random scan of her brain with a form of brain cancer. Dr. Vrionis was chosen to remove the tumor. Thankfully both Gene and Melanie are currently doing well.

We are so thankful to Dr. Frank Vrionis for taking the time to teach us about not only brain cancers, but the joinery cancer patients must go on.

We are certain this will be an important part of our upcoming documentary film, Those on the Front lines of Cancer.