Benefits of Frameless Delivery and Fractionation Demonstrated in Favorable Response Rates and Hearing Preservation.
Accuray Incorporated, a global leader in the field of radiosurgery, announced today that significant clinical data using the CyberKnife® Robotic Radiosurgery System was presented by top neurosurgery experts during the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) Annual Meeting, May 2-6 in San Diego, Calif. The presentations highlight outcomes with CyberKnife radiosurgery including favorable response rates and hearing preservation – further underscoring the System’s unique capabilities and benefits.
At this year’s AANS meeting, doctors presented on their experience treating intracranial tumors and spinal arterial venous malformations (AVMs) with CyberKnife radiosurgery. Key findings include:
- Randall W. Porter, M.D., from Barrow Neurological Institute presented experience treating 262 patients with acoustic neuromas – also called vestibular schwannomas – with either a single fraction using the Gamma Knife or multiple fractions using the CyberKnife. Within the CyberKnife group, 67 percent of patients retained their hearing, as opposed to only 37.5 percent in the Gamma Knife group at 16 months follow-up, demonstrating the benefits of easily fractionating treatment with the CyberKnife.
- Robert L. Dodd, M.D., Ph.D., and associates from Stanford presented experience treating 27 patients with spinal AVMs using CyberKnife radiosurgery with a mean follow-up of 49 months. Findings showed that 100 percent of the patients with follow-up of greater than three years achieved significant reductions in the sizes of their AVMs. The presentation described the largest series of intramedullary spinal cord AVMs – or those that arise from cells within the spinal cord – that have been treated with radiosurgical ablation.
- Steven D. Chang, M.D., and associates from Stanford presented experience treating 93 hemangioblastomas in the brain and spine, 66 of them with CyberKnife radiosurgery. Hemangioblastomas are often surgically inaccessible, present as multiple lesions and therefore typically require multiple surgical treatments. The team at Stanford was able to achieve a 96 percent response rate at a mean follow-up of 61 months, demonstrating that radiosurgery is “an attractive alternative to multiple surgical procedures for patients with hemangioblastomas.”
These presentations further underscore the unique capabilities of the CyberKnife System, which were recently showcased in a supplement issued by Neurosurgery, the official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The supplement, titled “CyberKnife Stereotactic Robotic Radiosurgery”, comprised 15 peer-reviewed papers dedicated to CyberKnife radiosurgery experience treating brain and spine indications.
As a non-invasive treatment for intracranial and spinal tumors, the CyberKnife System does not require the use of stabilizing head frames to achieve the sub-millimeter accuracy required for radiosurgery procedures, providing maximum patient comfort. For this reason treatment can easily be delivered in a single fraction or multiple fractions (sessions). This allows the dose to be spread over two to five sessions, which may reduce the risk of damage to sensitive structures such as the cranial nerves, the eyes or the spinal cord. The frameless nature of the CyberKnife System also easily enables treatment of both intracranial tumors and tumors at all levels of the spine.
“CNS applications continue to be an important area for CyberKnife radiosurgery, with more than 40,000 intracranial and spine patients treated to date worldwide,” said Eric P. Lindquist, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Accuray. “We recognize that the basis of radiosurgery was formed around these indications and remain focused on continuing to expand this core competency.”
CyberKnife radiosurgery offers a non-surgical treatment option for benign and cancerous tumors, as well as other conditions such as trigeminal neuralgia and AVMs.
Source: Accuray