Alexian Brothers Hospital Network Unveils Illinois Gamma Knife Center

Continuing its efforts to bring advanced neuroscience treatments to Chicago's northwest suburbs, Alexian Brothers Hospital Network has unveiled the Illinois Gamma Knife Center, where patients can undergo non-invasive brain "surgery" for treatment of cancerous and benign tumors, vascular malformations and functional disorders such as Parkinson's Disease and epilepsy.

The Center features the Leksell Gamma Knife from Elekta, a Stockholm, Sweden-based supplier of advanced and innovative radiation oncology and neurosurgery systems and services. The Gamma Knife enables doctors to focus radiation directly and precisely on targets in the brain without affecting healthy surrounding tissue. The device is the only one in Chicago's suburbs, and is one of only three in Illinois. Nationwide, there are less than one hundred Gamma Knife centers.

The Gamma Knife "has a very long history of being peer reviewed and studied, and it's been found to be an efficacious way of treating brain disorders," says Mark Frey, Vice President of the Alexian Neurosciences Institute. "It is the gold standard for brain-related radiation treatment."

Konstantin Slavin, M.D., a board-certified neurosurgeon at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Co-Medical Director of the Illinois Gamma Knife Center, says Leksell Gamma Knife is accepted worldwide "as the best way to treat brain lesions without actual incisions."

Located in a new medical office building on the campus of Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, the Illinois Gamma Knife Center is the latest extension of a relationship established in 2003 between Alexian and UIC's Neurosurgery Department. Through the affiliation, UIC neurosurgeons have joined with their neurosurgical colleagues at Alexian to bring on-site advanced neurosurgical techniques to Chicago's suburbs for the first time. "Putting the Gamma Knife into this geographical location will make it more available for many patients who otherwise would have to travel some distance to receive this treatment," Slavin says.

The Leksell Gamma Knife offers multiple benefits for patients. First and foremost, the risk of complications is less and recovery time is minimal compared with open brain surgery. Thousands of published papers have shown that Gamma Knife treatment offers unsurpassed clinical outcomes and improved quality of life.  "It allows us to reach inside the brain without an incision, so you do not risk injuring healthy tissue in order to reach deep-seated tumors, or otherwise disturb delicate parts of the brain," Slavin says. "It also allows us to treat several lesions at the same time, which ordinarily would require several different operations." Gamma Knife treatment, he adds, offers a follow-up option when surgeons discover during open brain surgery that a tumor cannot be removed completely because it is attached to the brain stem or an important nerve.

While other types of external-beam radiation treatment often require multiple treatments over an extended period of time, Gamma Knife surgery is a "non-fractionated treatment", meaning treatment is usually completed during a single outpatient visit, Frey says. The procedure typically takes about four hours, including advanced imaging, treatment planning and the radiation treatment itself, often referred to as radiosurgery. Each year, more than 35,000 patients around the world undergo Gamma Knife procedures, with minimal side effects reported. Although patients must get transportation to and from the procedure, because sedation might be necessary for relaxation purposes, "there really is no recovery involved, and patients can go back to most normal activities almost immediately," Slavin says.

The Gamma Knife delivers a high dose of ionizing radiation from 201 cobalt-60 sources. A surgeon guides the cobalt radiation to a target previously defined by advanced imaging techniques. When used to treat a tumor, the Leksell Gamma Knife packs the tumor with several different doses of cobalt radiation, aiming at a series of targets based on a three-dimensional image of the tumor. Each of the individual 201 radiation beams are too weak to damage normal tissues crossed by the beams on their way to the target. But when focused precisely on the target, the beams together deliver enough radiation to treat the targeted area. The Gamma Knife has such a focused effect in the target zone that the changes are considered surgical in their precision. "It's not an actual knife, but the radiation functions with scalpel-like precision," Frey says.

During the procedure, the patient's head is placed inside a stereotactic frame, which, in turn, is inserted into a collimator helmet through which the radiation is delivered. A computer-based Automatic Positioning System moves the patient's head to a number of treatment coordinates defined in the treatment plan.

Each Gamma Knife surgery requires a neurosurgeon, a radiation oncologist, a physicist and a nurse. Three radiation oncologists, one neurosurgeon and two physicists from Alexian participated in a Gamma Knife training program this past spring at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and three Alexian nurses received special training at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. Slavin, meanwhile, underwent Gamma Knife training at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, one of Europe's largest medical universities.

In addition to Slavin, leading members of the Illinois Gamma Knife Center medical team include Patrick Sweeney, M.D., a board-certified radiation oncologist and Co-medical Director of the center, and George Bovis, M.D., a board-certified neurosurgeon and Associate Medical Director of the center.

Alexian is already a leader in many specialties, including neurosciences, and the addition of the Illinois Gamma Knife Center will strengthen the network's standing as the premier health-care provider in Chicago's northwest suburbs, Slavin says.

"The network is a very successful and advanced medical enterprise," he says. "It has excellent physicians and excellent facilities that are very modern and advanced. Most important, it has a vision for development and the pursuit of excellence. The Gamma Knife center is both an illustration of this vision and an instrument for making the network even more of a leader."