Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Patients are often very pleased to learn they have a non-invasive alternative to an open
neurosurgical procedure. Most patients who are coming to us are aware Gamma Knife represents
an effective alternative to surgery and they're really here to get more information about
what to expect during the procedure, how likely this is to work, and whether there are going
to be side effects. We use Gamma Knife also to treat benign condition
such as trigeminal neuralgia, meningiomas, which are usually benign growths in the brain,
as well as acoustic neuromas which are benign tumors that grow along the acoustic nerve
and cause problems with hearing or balance so all of these conditions are things that
grow relatively slowly oftentimes. For trigeminal neuralgia, there is no growth but Gamma Knife
is used to either stunt the growth or improve the condition that the patients have. Mainly
Gamma Knife treats tumors of the brain that are not totally suitable for open surgery
for different reasons because of the location because of the size, because of the numbers.
For benign conditions such as meningiomas, pituitary adenomas, acoustic neuromas, the
goal of the treatment is to keep the tumor from enlarging and oftentimes, we'll see it
slowly shrink over time as well. An acoustic neuroma or schwannoma is a growth that occurs
along the acoustic nerve, often it encroaches upon the internal auditory canal near the
ear so patients can have symptoms related to this such as hearing deficits, ringing
in the ear, and in some cases, vestibular symptoms, its the vestibular cochlear nerve
so it has has to do with both hearing and balance and oftentimes we will treat a patients'
vestibular schwannoma when it is growing. In some cases, if the patient already has
symptoms, it is to prevent those symptoms from getting worse. So overtime, these usually
stabilize and eventually will start to shrink but because they are such slow growng lesions,
they tend to shrink slowly as well.