Seven centres are first in the USA to order the Leksell Gamma Knife Icon, which will soon be available to patients with brain cancer, or any of a range of other neurological disorders. Icon features the first integrated stereotactic cone beam CT imaging, online adaptive dose evaluation and planning enabling, according to Elekta, the most accurate delivery of frameless and frame-based treatments.
Icon was designed to enable treatment of virtually any target in the brain – from refractory essential tremor and complex vascular malformations to multiple metastases – while delivering the lowest dose to healthy tissues.
The first US Icon installations will be: Emory St. Joseph’s Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia; University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville, Virginia; Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York; The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas; Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health South Florida, Miami, Florida; University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, UPMC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Gamma Knife of Spokane, Spokane, Washington.
Gamma Knife Icon is the sixth generation of the company’s Leksell Gamma Knife system. According to Elekta, in the USA Gamma Knife is the most commonly used radiosurgery platform for the brain, the most clinically proven technology for cranial indications and offers the lowest dose to normal tissues.
Dade Lunsford, Lars Leksell professor of neurosurgery at UPMC and consultant to Elekta, says “Each of the six generations of Gamma Knife has resulted in improvements in the outcomes and efficiency of brain radiosurgery, and we have pioneered their use. We are pleased to add the first US complete Gamma Knife Icon system with anticipated installation in early 2016. Icon will add new methods of non-invasive cranial immobilization, while preserving standard immobilization technologies – used in more than 14,500 patients at UPMC – for patients with brain tumours and vascular malformations located in critical brain regions.”
According to Peter J. Rossi, medical director, Radiation Oncology at Emory St. Joseph’s Hospital, the upgrade of its Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion system to Icon presents new opportunities to treat patients with lesions more suited to a frameless, multi-session approach.
“Patients with lesions such as small metastases have benefited from the high precision, reproducibility and targeting ability of our Perfexion system, but with larger or more critically located tumours it can be better to fractionate their treatment,” Dr. Rossi explains. “With the Icon system, we will have the best of all worlds. We can maintain the unparalleled precision to treat tumours with the lowest possible radiation exposure to healthy tissues, while at the same time opening up the possibility to confidently treat without the stereotactic frame over more than a single session. These indications include acoustic schwannomas and complex meningiomas that may be close to hearing and visual anatomy, respectively, and large pituitary lesions, for example, that require the accumulation of a large dose over multiple sessions to protect healthy brain tissues.”
