BACKGROUND Trigeminal neuralgia is a debilitating condition caused by compression of the trigeminal nerve, ganglions, or divisions. Gamma knife radiosurgery has been increasingly used in the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia as a non-invasive alternative to microvascular decompression and rhizotomies. METHODS We reviewed the medical literature regarding outcomes, time course, and prognostic f...

Vestibular schwannomas are common, and gamma knife radiosurgery is a treatment option of symptomatic tumors. Hydrocephalus may be a complication of gamma knife treatment of vestibular schwannoma, though the cause-and-effect relationship can be debated because tumors can cause hydrocephalus without treatment. We present an MR imaging study of an unusual case of communicating hydrocephalus after ...

Background/Aims: Constant pain, especially if prominent, is sometimes considered incompatible with a diagnosis of typical idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia. This study aims to clarify the frequency of patient-reported constant pain in patients with medically intractable, typical, idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia as diagnosed with standard clinical parameters and confirmed by the response to a modi...

Stereotactic radiosurgery with the gamma knife delivers focused radiation from a cobalt-60 source in a single session to a pituitary tumour with minimal radiation to the adjacent normal brain tissue. Currently, gamma knife radiosurgery is predominantly used to treat failed pituitary surgery, although it has a role as a primary treatment for patients unwilling or unsuitable, for medical reasons,...

BACKGROUND Both fractionated external beam radiotherapy and single fraction radiosurgery for pituitary adenomas are associated with the risk of hypothalamic-pituitary (HP) axis dysfunction. OBJECTIVE To analyze the effect of treatment modality (Linac, TomoTherapy, or gamma knife) on hypothalamic dose and correlate these with HP-axis deficits after radiotherapy. METHODS Radiation plans of pa...

a case of cystic craniopharyngioma is presented in which multiple micro-surgeries failed to result in cyst resolution and significant enhancement in patients symptoms. tumor irradiation using leksell gamma knife resulted in complete absorption of the remained cystic parts of the tumor and dramatic improvement in patients symptoms three months after the radiosurgery .possible mechanisms are dis ...

introduction polymer gel dosimeters offer a practical solution to 3d dose verification for conventional radiotherapy as well as intensity-modulated and stereotactic radiotherapy. in this study, egsnrc calculated and pagat polymer gel dosimeter measured dose profiles from single shot irradiation with 18 mm collimator of gamma knife in homogeneous and inhomogeneous phantoms were compared with eac...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the relative socioeconomic costs of benign cranial base tumors treated with open surgery and gamma knife radiosurgery. METHODS In a retrospective study, we studied 174 patients with benign cranial base tumors, less than 3 cm in diameter (or volume less than 30 ml), admitted in the past 5 years. Group A (n = 94) underwent open surgery for removal...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the characteristics of a new rotating gamma system for stereotactic radiosurgery by comparison with a well accepted system. METHODS AND MATERIALS A novel gamma unit for stereotactic radiosurgery has been developed and distributed to 15 hospitals in China. The unit contains 30 cobalt-60 gamma radiation sources with initial activity of 200 Ci (7...