
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 3, 1990                   TAG: 9004030629
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

ATWATER'S TUMOR WORSE THAN THOUGHT

Republican Party Chairman Lee Atwater is undergoing a new course of treatment for a brain tumor that a party official concedes is more serious than originally thought.

Doctors treating Atwater, 39, said the tumor "has the potential to behave aggressively," a phrase repeated Monday in a statement issued by Mary Matalin, the chief of staff of the Republican Party.

Atwater was at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, where doctors planned to implant radioactive isotopes in the tumor in an effort to kill it.

Since the tumor was diagnosed March 6, Atwater has undergone daily radiation treatments.

B.J. Cooper, communications director at the Republican National Committee, said Atwater has conferred with several doctors since the original diagnosis and the consensus was that the growth was an astrocytoma in the right frontal lobe.

by CNB