Stereotactic Radiosurgery

AND CYBERKNIFE

Each institution boasts its preferred “minimally invasive” radiation beam of choice. Whether the choice is gamma knife, cyberknife, TrubeamTM, Linac, proton beam, or some variant thereof, there is common ground on all these stereotactic radiosurgery devices. Namely, each device passes a relatively harmless beam to the preferred location or “lesion” and the brain. Then, the beam angle is switched and another ‘harmless” beam is passed. Hence, only the lesion receives multiple blasts of radiation and the rest of the brain does not. This is typically an outpatient procedure that can “kill” even small cancer lesion.

Unlike whole brain radiation, Cyberknife is versatile and spares the brain from harmful radiation. Cyberknife can be performed many times on multiple different areas of the brain and is an outpatient procedure. Unlike gamma knife, cyberknife does not require pins implanted on the skin and skull with anesthetic. Cyberknife uses a mask instead.
Cyberknife has an excellent patient safety record and extremely efficient at ‘controlling’ tumors or metastases that are small (typically < 3 cm3).

Dual Rod construct for trauma or tumor repair