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Earlier this month, neurosurgeon Trimurti Nadkarni led a surgical team that removed what’s claimed to be the world’s largest brain tumour. The 31-year-old patient from Mumbai had a tumour that weighed 1.8kg and that had grown beneath the skin of his scalp through the skull and into the brain. Dr Nadkarni of the BYL Nair Charitable Hospital tells Claudia Hammond how his team approached the seven hour long, high risk operation.

The doctors and nurses working in besieged Eastern Ghouta in Syria say they are close to collapse as they try to save lives during the most intense period of fighting that the area has endured. Meinie Nicolai, director general of MSF in Brussels, is in contact with medical staff in Eastern Ghouta. They say they are running out of essential supplies, get little sleep and face death themselves from bombing as casualties pour into their damaged facilities.

What is it about the brains of older people who have retained good memories and thinking skills well into their 80s and 90s? One study led by Dr Emily Rogalski of Northwestern University has identified a small group dubbed SuperAgers who have memory skills as good as those of people 30 or more years younger. Dr Claudia Kawas at the University of California, Irvine studies people in their 90s and has also discovered intriguing features in their brains.

(Photo: Mr Santlal Pal before the operation to remove the 1.8kg tumour growing into his brain by surgeons at the B Y L Nair Charitable Hospital in Mumbai. Credit: B Y L Nair Charitable Hospital)