Cyberknife
Saginaw Valley Neurosurgery, in partnership with St. Mary's of Michigan, spearheaded the process to bring the advanced CyberKnife system to mid-Michigan. Our physicians use this cutting-edge system to treat brain cancers, spine-related cancers, benign brain tumors, malformations of blood vessels within the brain, and a variety of other conditions with this non-invasive treatment system.
See the below YouTube video for more information on CyberKnife:
CyberKnife is the only radiosurgery system to combine a linear accelerator, a robotic arm and the image guidance system. With its unique precision capabilities, the CyberKnife can target lesions that are unreachable by other radiosurgery systems. It is also the only system that can continually monitor and adjust in real-time for patient movement during treatment. For procedures such as the Gamma Knife, patient movements are restricted through the use of a frame that must be bolted to the head with skull pins. The CyberKnife can locate and treat tumors without the use of this painful, invasive head frame. Also, unlike Gamma Knife, this precision can be equally extended to targets in the body (not just the brain, as with Gamma Knife) including targets that constantly move with breathing or with heartbeats.
Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) combines the principles of stereotaxy, or 3-D target localization, with multiple cross-fired beams from a high-energy radiation source to precisely irradiate an abnormal (oftentimes cancerous) lesion within a patient's body. This technique allows maximally aggressive dosing of the target, while normal surrounding tissue receives lower, non-injurious doses of radiation. The ideal objective is the ablation or destruction of the targeted area without damaging any normal tissue outside of the defined target area. Stereotactic radiosurgery differs from conventional radiotherapy in several ways. The efficacy of radiotherapy depends primarily on the greater sensitivity of tumor cells to radiation relative to normal brain tissue. With all forms of standard radiotherapy, the spatial accuracy with which the treatment is focused on the tumor is a secondary concern; normal tissues are protected by administering the radiation dose over multiple sessions (fractions) daily for a period of a few to several weeks.
- In The News
- St. Mary's of Michigan neurosurgeon Gerald Schell is performing minimally-invasive spinal fusion surgeries that require just two tiny incisions.
Watch the video from the operating room. 
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