Conditions Treated

Gamma Knife is an FDA approved radiosurgical device for treating Metastatic brain tumors. It is especially suitable for treating intracranial lesions such as:

• Metastatic Brain Tumors
• Arteriovenous Malformations
• Deep-seated Intracranial Tumors
• Meningiomas
• Neoplasms
• Partially Resected Tumors
• Pituitary Tumors
• Trigeminal Neuralgia
• Vascular Malformations
• Skull Based Tumors
• Glomus Jugulare
• Optic Melanoma

The Advantages of Gamma Knife

In addition to its very high success rate, radiosurgery with the Gamma Knife has many clear advantages:

• The Gamma Knife is a FDA approved radiosurgical device to treat metastatic brain cancer.
• The Gamma Knife offers tremendous technical accuracy, so a high dose of radiation can be delivered to a target with minimal risk to nearby tissues and structures.
• There is very little patient discomfort. The patient may be lightly sedated, but is awake throughout the procedure.
• Gamma Knife radiosurgery is an outpatient procedure and the cost is often 25 to 30 percent less than traditional neurosurgery.

Alternative Therapy

Neoplastic and functional disorders represent the majority of Gamma Knife procedures. But Gamma Knife surgery also offers new hope for a variety of lesions that were often unsuccessfully treated by conventional surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy. The Gamma Knife's ability to create conformal and irregular dose plans makes it ideal for small brain tumors and vascular lesions that are irregular, as well as to treat multiple tumors on one treatment session. Gamma Knife treatment can be used as an alternative to open cranial-surgery or in addition to conventional surgery, microsurgery, chemotherapy, and other forms of radiation treatment.

The new Leksell GammaPlan PFX is a sophisticated treatment planning software package. It now allows virtually unlimited ability for sculpting the dose distribution, enabling composite shots and dynamic shaping with absolute accuracy. Because of this, the treatment plan effectively wraps the dose around the most complex shapes while limiting the dose to surrounding brain tissue and critical structures and deliver treatment to multiple targets seamlessly during a single session. The treatment machine sectors containing multi-source collimators are automatically positioned to use the correct collimator sizes and plugging for each target. And because of this, the treatments are more precise. For the patients, the seamless delivery of all treatments allows for shorter treatment times and increased comfort.

Assessing Results

Periodic MRIs are scheduled to detect shrinkage and other changes at the radiation site. The result of the Gamma Knife treatment appears over days, weeks or months after the treatment. Some of the lesions dissolve or sclerose gradually, while others cease to grow.

Gamma Knife radiosurgery destroys the ability of tumor cells to grow. Long-term studies have shown favorable success rates as follows:

Acoustic Neuromas	90-95% tumor control rate
AVMs	80-90% obliteration (2 yrs)
Glioblastoma Multiforme	25-35% mediian survival rate (2.5 yrs)
Meningiomas	95-97% tumor control rate
Metastases (all types)	95-98% control rate
Pituitary Tumors:
Secretory	65-85% tumor control rate
Non-Secretory	90% tumor control rate
Trigeminal Neuralgia	80-85% good to excellent relief