Gamma Knife®
The Gamma Knife is a very precise and sophisticated tool used to treat malignant and benign intracranial lesions and tumors. Gamma Knife radiosurgery is “surgery without a scalpel” and employs 192 small radiation therapy beams functioning as a “virtual scalpel” to converge on and accurately treat small areas of the brain. There is no need for general anesthesia and no surgical incision when patients are treated with Gamma Knife radiosurgery. Gamma Knife radiosurgery is used to successfully treat conditions including brain metastasis, meningiomas, arteriovenous malformations, trigeminal neuralgia, pituitary adenomas and acoustic neuromas.
Gamma Knife radiosurgery is jointly performed by a radiation oncologist and neurosurgeon. Gamma Knife radiosurgery involves the delivery of a single treatment of radiation therapy and is performed in one outpatient visit. Patients typically come to the Illinois Gamma Knife Center in the morning and have a stereotactic head frame placed under local anesthetic. The head frame is specially designed to very accurately localize intracranial areas in three planes (the X, Y, and Z planes). Once the frame is placed, we perform an MRI of the brain and this information is transferred to our treatment planning computers. We design a conformal treatment plan to precisely treat necessary areas of the brain while sparing the rest of the brain from high doses of radiation. Treatments typically take 1 to 2 hours and most patients go home before lunchtime.
Radiation Oncology Consultants (ROC) have worked in collaboration with our neurosurgeon colleagues and the AMITA Alexian Brothers Medical Center and Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Cancer Center since 2005. The Gamma Knife Centers are staffed by a skilled team of radiation oncologists, neurosurgeons, medical physicists and nurses who all have specialized training in the delivery of Gamma Knife radiosurgery (also called stereotactic radiosurgery). Our doctors have specialized training in Gamma Knife radiosurgery and have a lot of experience treating intracranial conditions using this novel technique.
