The Comprehensive Cancer Center at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center has added the Leksell Gamma Knife^® Perfexion™, the most accurate and advanced stereotactic radiosurgery technology available, to its armament of treatment tools.

For the first time, Perfexion offers clinicians the advantage of being able to treat head and neck and cervical spine tumors in addition to the intracranial benign and malignant lesions and vascular malformations typically treated with Gamma Knife.

Benefits of Perfexion

• Unparalleled accuracy
• Improved normal tissue sparing
• Improved ability to treat base of skull and upper neck tumors
• Best-in-class radiation safety and protection

What Is Gamma Knife?

Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is a method of delivering an ultra-precise, highly focused dose of radiation to an intracranial, neck or cervical spine target.

Based on nearly 50 years of clinical experience, Gamma Knife SRS has become the treatment of choice for selected benign and malignant brain tumors and vascular malformations involving the brain as an alternative to conventional open surgery. It is now also a treatment option for head and neck and cervical spine lesions.

The treatment plan is carefully designed by a team of neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists and radiation physicists who use high-tech computer planning to precisely conform the radiation dose to the size and shape of the lesion. The unit aims narrow pencil-beams of radioactive material at the lesion. The beams focus precisely on the target tissue, thus minimizing radiation effects to surrounding healthy brain tissues.   

The Perfexion allows all patients to be treated in a single session. The dramatic increase by 300% of the treatable volume improves patient comfort and throughput and is expected to greatly expand radiosurgery’s role in the head and neck and cervical spine areas.