Because it provides rapid non-invasive treatment, patients can often get back to normal faster and with less discomfort. Stephen Tatter, M.D., Ph.D., a neurosurgeon and Co-director of the Gamma Knife Center. It s an outpatient procedure which allows patients to go home in about half a day. Only a single treatment is needed. The Gamma Knife treatment itself takes about an hour on average.
Patients can usually return to their normal routine within a day of the procedure.
Also, much of the disability and convalescence associated with conventional surgery is avoided. It can be used to successfully treat primary and metastatic malignant brain tumors and other common benign abnormalities of the brain, including brain arteriovenous malformations, acoustic tumors, meningiomas, pituitary adenomas, craniopharyngiomas and others. It was originally designed to make lesions in the brain to treat tremor and Parkinson's disease and has recently been used to successfully treat trigeminal neuralgia. Lesions that are otherwise considered inoperable or inaccessible can often be treated successfully. The Gamma Knife has better than a 90 percent success rate for lesions most commonly treated with radiosurgery.