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Oftentimes patients are concerned about whether or not the procedure will hurt or how long
it will take and most importantly, the effectiveness depending on what it is we are treating them
for. We give some medicine to help both relax the patient and prevent pain and then when
we put the frame on we also put some numbing medicine in the areas where the pinsites are.
Nursing provides, in addition to emotional comfort, we're with the patient of course,
from the beginning when we greet them and then we're also there during the headframe
placement whether that's just encouraging them or helping them to relax, even holding
a hand during the process. The amount of discomfort a patient will experience
is shortlived because once the frame is actually on, it just feels tight around the head. Out
of the four or five hours of the procedure time for the Gamma Knife treatment, the most
discomfort will be during the headframe treatment which will be three to five minutes. Before
the procedure starts, we give good medications to ease the discomfort and to caml them down.
This is the headframe here. You can see it's a rectangle. It has a post at each corner
with a pin in each post. It's very light. It weighs less than two pounds. The Gamma
Knife headframe is attached to the skull with four pins. These do leave a small puncture
mark in the skin. There's no drilling of holes in the skull and there's no permanent damage
of any kind to the skull once the headframe is removed, it's really as if there were four
tiny pin prick areas in the skull that are probably no bigger than the end of a pencil.
I don't have any cases, any recall of patients that after that had any problems with the
headframe and after so many cases, I know that for sure. The next step is to measure
the patient's head. It's because everyone's head size is just a little bit different.
We do that with this device. Pit it on the frame. Then we use a ruler to take measurements
in each of these positions. Once he headframe is on the patient, the patient is taken to
MRI, where the MRI which will be used for treatment planning is performed. The MRI clearly
delineates the internal structures of the brain that we need to see. Many times by then
the patients are pretty relaxed and actually ready to kind of rest during the planning
process that's occurring between the physicians and that procress takes anywhere from thirty
to sixty minutes when we are then ready to begin the treatment. We bring the patient
into the Gamma Knife treatment room and make sure everyone is in agreement with the treatment
about to be delivered. they actually don't feel anything when the Gamma Knife Treatment
is delivered. In fact, there's no noise, nothing that touches them, they lay down on the table,
they go in the machine for a while, they get the treatment, a lot of times we play music
as requested, most of the time at that point the patient frequently will fall asleep during
the treatment, they're relaxed and that' the easist part, they lay on the table for half
an hour to an hour and a half and they come out and they're done. And when the headframe
is removed they just get a bandaid. There's no stitches required. It's just a small mark
that heals quickly on the patient's skin. After treatment what we hear most is the patient
is very grateful for the treatment that they've received, the care that they've received and
especially if we held their hand during the headframe placement but they glad that its
over with and done and that everything went smoothly for them. They immediately, all of
them, realize the tremendous advantage they have with that procedure against the other
procedure so they are totally grateful of it.