ATLANTA /PRNewswire/ - Just one year after it began clinical use of Elekta's Leksell Gamma Knife® Perfexion™ radiosurgery system, Barnes-Jewish Hospital (St. Louis, Mo., USA) is poised to offer the benefits of Gamma Knife® surgery to several new patient groups. With Elekta's Extend™ program for Gamma Knife Perfexion, Barnes-Jewish doctors will now be able to treat-over two to five radiosurgery sessions-patients with larger tumors or lesions close to critical structures located in the brain, skull base and in other regions in the head and neck.

Extend is a program that that allows clinicians to non-invasively fix or immobilize the patient's head, making repeatable or "hypofractionated" Gamma Knife surgery practical for these cases.

Barnes-Jewish Hospital is the second U.S. center to offer these benefits with the new Elekta technology.
"Extend represents additional growth in our capability and flexibility to meet patient needs with specialized radiation therapy," says Joseph R. Simpson, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of Barnes-Jewish Hospital's Gamma Knife of St. Louis.

While single fraction Gamma Knife surgery excels in treating small malignant and benign lesions and those in less critically located regions in the head, Extend captures treatment indications in which a hypofractionated approach has the potential for a better clinical result. For example, in cases in which a small tumor abuts a critical structure, physicians can use Extend to provide a greater anti-tumor effect over repeated treatment fractions (i.e., treatment sessions).

Another promising use of Extend at Barnes-Jewish Hospital will be glomus jugulare tumors, according to Dr. Simpson. Glomus jugulare tumors grow along the jugular vein, eroding the bones of the skull, where nerves are located. Often these tumors extend too far below the skull base to be reached with a frame-based Gamma Knife approach.

"We typically use linear accelerator-based radiotherapy to treat these tumors," he says. "However, the disadvantage of that technique for glomus jugulare lesions is that they require more fractions, which means more time and greater potential for side effects."

In evaluating their decision to acquire Extend, the radiation oncology and neurosurgery departments also provided information on the solution to ENT (ear-nose-throat) physicians in the otolaryngology department to determine their interest. These clinicians could refer certain cases for hypofractionated radiosurgery with Extend, including patients with nasopharygeal carcinoma, paranasal sinus tumors and extensiv skull base tumors, he says.

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