Treatment Advantages

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

• The Gamma Knife offers tremendous technical accuracy, so a high dose of radiation can be delivered to a target with minimum risk to nearby tissues and structures.
• Since there is no incision, there are no surgical risks such as infection.
• There is very little patient discomfort. The patient will be lightly sedated but is awake throughout the procedure.
• This procedure is done on an outpatient basis.
• Because of reduced hospital stay, the cost of a Gamma Knife procedure is often 25 to 30 percent less than traditional neurosurgery.

Alternative Therapy

Neoplastic and vascular 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. Gamma Knife treatment can be used as an alternative to open cranial-surgery or an adjunct to conventional surgery, microsurgery, chemotherapy, and other forms of radiation treatment.

Treatable Disorders

Gamma Knife treatment is especially suitable for treating intracranial lesions such as:

• Arteriovenous Malformations
• Meningiomas
• Acoustic Tumors
• Vascular Formations
• Deep-seated Intracranial Tumors
• Metatastic Brain Tumors
• Pituitary Tumors
• Partially Resected Tumors
• Trigeminal Neuralgia