TUMOR ZAPPER.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

Sacred Heart Medical Center took delivery Wednesday of a $3.2 million, 22-ton piece of medical technology that can zap tumors and other brain disorders with remarkable precision.

Called a Gamma Knife, it uses an array of powerful radiation beams to target brain tumors that a surgeon can't reach, doctors said.

The machine is expected to go online sometime in late October at the Eugene hospital's new Gamma Knife Center.

Hospital officials said they estimate 200 to 300 patients will get the Gamma Knife treatment in its first year of operation. Those patients would otherwise have to travel to Portland to be treated.

First developed in the late 1960s, the Gamma Knife is used to treat about 30,000 patients a year worldwide, said neurosurgeon Andrew Kokkino, co-medical director of the Gamma Knife Center at Sacred Heart.

The Gamma Knife treats tumors that would be inaccessible to brain surgeons and to treat multiple brain tumors in different parts of the brain that would be difficult to excise surgically, Kokkino said. It also can be used to treat a person who is too frail to survive an open brain surgery.

"There are times, especially in the brain, when pinpoint accuracy is important," said Dr. David Fryefield, a radiation oncologist and co-medical director of the Gamma Knife Center.

Patients who would spend days or weeks in the hospital recovering from open surgery instead go home the same day after Gamma Knife treatment, he said.

In addition to attacking tumors, the technology also can be used to target troublesome nerves and benign growths that cause devastating ailments, Kokkino said. For instance, trigeminal neuralgia is a condition that causes debilitating facial pain. The Gamma Knife delivers a small, powerful dose of radiation to scar a nerve at the base of the skull and diminish the pain, he said.

Doctors are now starting to use the technology for treatment of other illnesses, including Parkinson's disease and epilepsy, Kokkino said.

"Things we never considered five years ago are now being considered," he said.

Unlike conventional radiation delivered by oncologists, the radiation delivered by the Gamma Knife delivers a precise beam of radiation to a target as little as 4 millimeters wide inside the brain. The machine can direct radiation to a single point in the brain from up to 201 angles.

Neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists and medical physicists work together to figure out where and how to target a tumor without damaging surrounding tissue and nerves, Kokkino said.

"None of us by ourselves would be able to do this," Fryefield said. "We do it together."

The patients' head is secured in a framework so that it doesn't move, and the whole procedure takes just a few minutes, he said.

The treatment can be expected to save some patients' lives.

For others, it can extend lives and improve quality of life, Kokkino said.

PeaceHealth, the parent corporation of Sacred Heart, began investigating the technology at the behest of local neurosurgeons and oncologists, said Barb Dember, PeaceHealth's regional vice president of clinical institutes.

The organization spent about a year researching the issue and determining there was enough patient volume to support the technology and that its benefits justified its expense, she said.

"This is a technology seen as a necessary component of a neurosciences and cancer treatment program," she said.

The new machine will not be moved to PeaceHealth's new RiverBend hospital in Springfield in part because it weighs 22 tons, but also because it will be the centerpiece of the new Oregon Neurosciences Institute at the Hilyard campus, Dember said.

The institute will have elements at Hilyard, RiverBend and physicians' offices, she said.