Kidney Tumors

Radiosurgery for kidney tumors is noninvasive, and typically carries less risk of complications than conventional surgery. For patients who refuse surgery or have medically inoperable kidney tumors, radiosurgery can be an effective treatment option. CyberKnife, which delivers high-dose radiation over one to five treatments, can be particularly effective for treatment of small kidney tumors. CyberKnife has the ability to compensate for normal patient movements, precisely targeting the tumor during the entire procedure and minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue. This is important when treating kidney tumors, which can shift during treatment due to regular patient movements such as breathing.

Liver Tumors

CyberKnife’s ability to treat tumors with precisely focused radiation offers an important advantage for liver cancer patients. Accurate to within less than a millimeter, radiosurgery has minimal effect on surrounding health tissue. This level of accuracy enables doctors to target liver tumors with high-dose radiation, which significantly reduces the number of treatments needed – usually between three and five over several days compared to 30-40 over several weeks required for radiotherapy systems. Radiosurgery has other benefits as well, namely its ability to track tumors in real time. That means patients breathe normally during each treatment session, since the radiation beam adjusts automatically to the tumor location.

Ocular/Orbital Tumors

CyberKnife is capable of high-dose radiation for tumors or lesions in especially sensitive areas of the brain and is the only radiosurgery system that doesn’t need an invasive head frame. Radiosurgery with CyberKnife safely delivers high-dose radiation while minimizing exposure to healthy tissue. Ocular and orbital tumors can be difficult to treat due to their close proximity to important structures in the brain, and CyberKnife provides an effective treatment option for these tumors due to the precise nature of the radiation beams it delivers. Ocular and orbital tumors can greatly affect a patient’s quality of life, and radiosurgery with CyberKnife offers a treatment option that can preserve a patient’s vision.

Pancreatic Cancer

CyberKnife treats pancreatic cancer with high-dose radiation. Clinical studies are ongoing to test the CyberKnife’s effectiveness in treating localized, non-metastatic pancreatic cancer. However, preliminary results involving patients with relatively advanced cases of pancreatic cancer suggest that CyberKnife radiosurgery treatment is well tolerated and provides some clinical benefit.

Prior to treatment, doctors implant between three to five small metal markers known as fiducials in or near the tumor that enable the CyberKnife to pinpoint the tumor location throughout treatment. Implanting the markers is an outpatient procedure that takes about an hour. About a week later, patients are fitted with a custom body mold made of soft material that they lie on during treatments. The fitting process is painless. Patients then undergo a CT scan that assists in developing a customized treatment plan.

Spinal Tumors

Spine cancer is an abnormal growth of cells in or around the spinal cord resulting in a tumor. If the abnormal cells originated from cells in the tissues of the spine, this is a Primary Spine Tumor. Primary tumors in the spine are relatively rare and are either benign (non-cancerous) or malignant (cancerous).

Benign Spine Tumors include:

• Meningiomas
• Neurofibromas
• Schwannoma

Malignant Spine Tumors include:

• Astrocytomas
• Ependymosas

If the abnormal cells originated in another part of the body, as in cancer originating in the lung, breast, colon or skin and were carried to the spine by the blood or other bodily fluid, growing into a tumor, then it is considered a Metastatic Spine Tumor.Both primary and metastatic spine tumors are very serious because they can compress the spinal cord and/or destroy the bone and surrounding tissue in the spine. These tumors cause patients to experience pain, gait and posture problems, and other neurological issues.

Trigeminal Neuralgia

CyberKnife® robotic radiosurgery offers frameless, non-invasive pain relief treatment for patients suffering with trigeminal neuralgia (TN). CyberKnife painlessly delivers precise beams of high-dose radiation to the trigeminal nerve root, without requiring incisions, hospitalization, or long recovery time.