A diagnosis of a brain tumor often means traditional brain surgery: invasive procedures that carry with it high-risk especially for the delicate tissues of the brain.
A breakthrough technology called Gamma Knife allows patients to now choose a non-invasive procedure proven to shrink brain tumors or stop its growth nearly 90 percent of the time.
Gamma Knife actually uses gamma rays instead of the traditional surgical knife. This non-invasive procedure has the ability to target small brain tumors without hurting the surrounding healthy tissue. For every Gamma Knife surgery, a multidisciplinary team of neurosurgeons and radiation oncologists carefully customize the dosage of gamma rays and deliver the exact amount with micro-precision with the help of a state-of-the-art software.
By using tiny beams of radiation, Gamma Knife surgery is able to treat hard-to-reach tumors that traditional open brain surgery cannot.
More accurate targeting means being able to deliver a full dose of radiation at one time instead of multiple treatments.
In the country, the Philippine Gamma Knife Center is housed at Cardinal Santos Memorial Hospital. The Philippine Gamma Knife Center is one of the multidisciplinary centers of the Brain and Spine Institute at Cardinal Santos Medical Center.
Established in 1998, the Philippine Gamma Knife Center has since performed almost 3,000 successful Gamma Knife procedures since it launched. It has acquired the Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion, the most accurate and most advanced radiosurgery technology available in the world today.
“Perfexion now has an eXtend program, which allows the delivery of multiple sessions of Gamma Knife by using a head cushion to immobilize the patient’s head—it improves their tolerance for multi-session procedures. Before, treatments that took 3 to 5 consecutive days would be difficult for the patient. This means, Perfexion can now safely treat brain tumors that require more than one session of Gamma Knife Radiosurgery,” says Dr. Ted Vesagas.
He says over 280 successful procedures have been undertaken using Perfexion at the center. With this new technology available in the country, more people will be able to overcome the devastating diagnosis of a brain tumor because of the beams of hope that the Gamma Knife Perfexion surgery delivers.