Imagine brain surgery, but without use of a knife and without even breaking the skin. Due to incredible advances in the delivery of radiation therapy, Loyola University Health System (Loyola) provides new options for minimally invasive brain surgery to address tumors and vascular malformations.
Stereotactic radiosurgery, also called shaped-beam radiosurgery, is a way of treating cancerous and non-cancerous brain disease with a high dose of radiation, sometimes administered in only a single dose. The treatment is so precise and dramatic that it is considered surgical, noted Bahman Emami, M.D., chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, part of Loyola.
Like other forms of radiation treatment, radiosurgery does not remove the tumor or lesion. It damages the DNA of targeted cells so they no longer reproduce. The dose of radiation may take only a few minutes, but the tumor shrinks and dies at the same rate that it would have grown - over several months or even up to two years.
Compared to traditional radiation treatment, stereotactic radiosurgery delivers a more powerful dose of radiation that is matched to the three-dimensional shape of the tumor while sparing nearby healthy tissue from radiation damage. When a tumor sits next to a critical structure, such as the tiny optic nerve, precision is of utmost importance.
At Loyola, you have access to one of the only shaped-beam, computer-assisted surgical therapy system within a 150-mile radius. With our nationally recognized team of neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists, physicists, therapists and nurses by your side, you truly benefit from a unique combination of exceptional expertise, technology and care.
Using linear accelerator technology, the state-of-the-art stereotactic radiotherapy system allows Loyola’s medical team to achieve accuracy within 2 millimeters. Accuracy with linear accelerator technology depends on in-depth planning prior to treatment and complete immobilization of the patient's head during treatment. The intensive planning process involves a neurosurgeon, a radiation oncologist and a radiation physicist who manipulate computerized, three-dimensional images of the patient's brain to plan the treatment dose. Loyola's team of radiation oncologists and neurosurgeons collaborated with Loyola's oral and maxillofacial surgeons to devise a precise head frame that positions the patient's head and eliminates the possibility of movement during treatment.
"This is the most sophisticated system of its kind," said Emami. The linear accelerator is located in the dedicated stereotactic radiosurgery suite at the Loyola Outpatient Center. The system not only is used as a primary treatment for brain tumors and selected head and neck tumors and lesions, but also as an adjunct to surgery and other treatments, and to treat some body cancers.