Find More Accuracy in the Treatment of Brain Tumor by Stereotactic Radiosurgery
Stereotactic radiotherapy (also called stereotaxy) is a type of minimally invasive surgical intervention. It uses radiation treatment to deliver a large and precise radiation dose to the tumor area in a single session. This type of surgery applies a three-dimensional coordinates system to locate small targets inside the body. With the help of gamma knife, radiation beams are focused at the tumor from various angles for a short period of time. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) can be performed by several other machines such as X-Knife, CyberKnife and Clinac. It is used to treat brain tumors and other brain disorders that are difficult to be treated by regular surgery.
This type of surgery works under three main components. The first one is stereotactic planning system; it includes multimodality image matching tools. The stereotactic atlas is a series of cross sections of anatomical structure. In most atlases, the three dimensions are as latero-lateral (x), dorso-ventral (y) and rostro-caudal (z). Another one is a stereotactic device or apparatus which uses a set of three coordinates (x, y and z). And the last one is stereotactic localization and placement procedure. This therapy works in the same way as other forms of radiation treatment. Instead of removing the tumor, stereotactic radiotherapy damages the DNA of tumor cells. In this way malignant and metastatic tumors may shrink more rapidly.
Stereotactic radiosurgery can effectively treat different types of tumors including benign, malignant, primary, metastatic, single and multiple. A study in 2008 by The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center revealed that SRS and Whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) for the treatment of metastatic brain tumors have more that twice the risk of developing leaning and memory problems than treated with SRS alone.