Neurosurgery

Diagnostic accuracy allows the surgeon to work precisely where he or she wants to work with amazing efficiency and reliability, each and every time. The result is that the surgical incision has been reduced to an absolute minimum. Smaller incisions, less tissue trauma, and better surgical planning have reduced the overall risk of brain surgery from almost 90% in the 1940s to about less than 2% in the twenty-first century.

A groundbreaking medical advance of recent years, is the Leksell gamma knife. This revolutionary new treatment is a safe, effective, and cost-efficient alternative to conventional neurosurgery for certain patients. Developed in 1968 by Swedish professors Lars Leksell and Borge Larsson, the Gamma Knife is a highly advanced instrument used to treat arteriovenous malformations (AVM), facial pain, benign and malignant brain tumors, and other functional brain disorders. What makes the gamma knife so unique is that it successfully treats these conditions with no incision. Instead, it uses a concentrated radiation dose from Cobalt-60 sources. A total of 201 beams of radiation intersect to form a powerful tool focused on a targeted area of abnormal tissue within the brain. The gamma knife is so precise that it damages and destroys the unhealthy tissue while sparing adjacent normal, healthy tissue.