Scalp device might help patients with brain tumors

Dr. Eric Wong, a neurologist with an engineering background, had a hunch that an experimental scalp device to treat brain tumors using electromagnetic fields would work. But some other researchers scoffed at Wong, co-director of the tumor center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Doctors at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, for example, rejected Wong's request in 2010 to join a study of the device in patients with glioblastomas — the deadly type of brain cancer that killed Senator Edward M. Kennedy — because they doubted the electromagnetic fields could penetrate the skull. So Wong wound up referring patients to other facilities — Tufts Medical Center and Lahey Hospital — participating in a study of the device, called Optune, in newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients.