Radiotherapy for brain tumors
Roswell Park’s Radiation Medicine Department provides a full range of radiation treatments. But the expertise of our Radiation Medicine team is as important as the technology they use, for ensuring the safety of our patients and verifying that the tumor is treated effectively. Our team includes:
- Board-certified medical physicists, who ensure that information has been correctly transferred to the machine, that the plan matches the physician’s prescription, and that all information is consistent, understandable and well-documented.
- Board-certified radiation oncologists — physicians who are responsible for the medically appropriate and technically correct radiation treatment of cancer patients.
- Medical dosimetrists, who design radiation treatment plans to match the prescription ordered by the radiation oncologist.
- Full-time, board-certified radiation therapists, who plan and deliver the prescribed radiation therapy.
Stereotactic radiosurgery with Gamma Knife
Gamma Knife radiosurgery isn’t a knife at all, but a type of extremely precise and sharply focused radiation therapy that treats tumors and lesions in the brain. The precision of the tool is “surgical,” but there’s no cutting, no incisions, and no requirement for anesthesia. Patients are awake and go home after the treatment, resuming normal activities.
The minimally invasive treatment uses a unique technology that produces 200 intersecting beams of gamma radiation. The individual beams pass through the body without causing damage — preserving healthy brain tissue — until the point where they intersect, destroying cancer cells.
Roswell Park is a world leader in Gamma Knife radiosurgery. Learn how our experts can help you.
Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) or 3-Dimensional conformal radiation therapy
Using a device called a linear accelerator, these treatments deliver precise doses of radiation to tumors or to specific areas within the tumors. The radiation beams can be shaped to the outline of the tumor.
Chemotherapy for brain tumors
While some brain tumors respond to drug treatment, especially when combined with other therapies, chemotherapy choices are limited because of the blood-brain barrier, the brain’s natural defense system that prevents foreign substances — including many medications — from entering the brain.
Some patients take the chemotherapy drug temozolomide (Temodar®), usually while receiving radiation therapy at the same time. Clinical trials have shown that this combination can increase how long patients live as well as how long they live before the disease gets worse. There are a number of other chemotherapy agents utilized by our neuro-oncology team as part of an individualized treatment plan based on the specific tumor type.
Our neuro-oncologists also perform intrathecal chemotherapy — a procedure in which drugs are injected into the fluid space between the tissues covering the brain and spinal cord. This enables the drugs to get past the blood-brain barrier.
We understand how frightening a brain tumor diagnosis can be. Contact us for a consultation with our brain tumor team, and let’s talk about how we can help.