SYDNEY and ATLANTA, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire/ — On August 3, Macquarie University Hospital
(MUH) performed Australia’s first Gamma Knife® surgery with its
new Leksell Gamma Knife®
Perfexion™ system, making it the country’s first and only
center capable of providing dedicated intracranial radiosurgery.
MUH and the Australian School of Advanced Medicine (ASAM) partnered
with Genesis Care, Australia’s leading provider of cancer
management services, to procure the system, which is located in
Genesis Care’s radiation therapy department at MUH.
MUH’s first radiosurgery patient, a
33-year-old man with multiple small brain tumors, underwent a
100-minute Gamma Knife surgery treatment and was able to return
home the same day, according to John Fuller, M.D., Macquarie
neurosurgeon and Gamma Knife program co-director.
“He was awake during the whole procedure and received only a
local anesthetic,” Dr. Fuller reports. “The gentleness of Gamma Knife surgery not
only benefits patients, but also extends to their families, our
treatment team and the healthcare system as a whole.”
Gamma Knife radiosurgery is a
patient friendlier alternative to traditional brain surgery for
illnesses such as metastatic disease, which is cancer that has
travelled to the brain from elsewhere in the body. With pinpoint
accuracy, the system delivers up to thousands of low-intensity
radiation beams to one or more targets in a single session.
Perfexion, the latest generation Gamma Knife model, provides even
greater speed and ease of use than previous models.
“The Perfexion improvements enable greater ability to treat
multiple targets in a single session, and Gamma Knife retains its
status as intracranial gold standard,” says Professor Michael
K
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