Docyard | Cyberknife therapy can help

Dr Aditya Gupta is a Director, Neurosurgery & Cyberknife Centre at Agrim Institute for Neuro sciences, Artemis Hospital, Gurguram

Cancer spread to the brain is one of the feared complications of cancer that poses significant mortality and morbidity in the patients with advanced cancer. This occurs when the cancer cells travel through the blood stream or the lymph system from the original tumour and metastasize (spread) to the brain. This is known as metastatic cancer. For example breast cancer that has spread to the brain would be referred to as metastatic cancer and not primary cancer.

According to Globocan 2018 report, issued by the International Association of Cancer Registries (IARC) associated with World Health Organisation (WHO), over 28,000 new brain tumour cases are reported annually in India. Around 24,000 patients lost their lives battling such deadly and cancerous tumours.

The following can be the symptoms of brain metastasis but many patients may experience additional complications caused by the original tumour and its related manifestation.

• Increased pressures within the skull: In most of the cases symptoms are caused by the expansion of lesions and increased ICP (Increased Cranial Pressure). The most common symptoms of ICP are headaches, vomiting, and disturbance in consciousness.
• Headache: It is the initial symptom in more than half of the cases of brain tumour and this is faced by the most of the patients at some point in their life.
• Vomiting: This is an occasional accompaniment with the headaches. It is far more common in children.
• Seizures: It is an uncontrolled and electrical disturbance in the brain. It causes changes in the mental behaviour, movements and level of consciousness. These are almost associated with 35 per cent cases of brain tumours.

Virtually any systemic malignancy can metastasize to the brain, but there are some which have greater tendency to do so, Melanoma (a type of skin cancer) has a tendency metastasize to the brain. Other cancerous tumours in skin, breast renal and colon can also metastasize the brain. Some differences are seen in the types of primary malignancies responsible for metastasis of the brain in both the genders.  In males, lung cancer is the most common source of brain metastasis whereas breast cancer is the most common source in females.

Why Cyberknife M6 over other traditional methods of treatment?

The treatment varies with the size and type of tumour. The primary sites of malignancy are extent to both locally and in rest of the body, the general individual health and presence of other medical problems. The goals of the treatment involves improve body functioning, controlling the cancer and its satellite its tumour within the brain.

Cyberknife M6 is performed in a non-invasive manner with a higher brain surgery recovery time. The characteristics of M6 to pinpoint the exact location of the tumor in real time using 3-D imaging techniques during the treatment of brain tumor and ablating the tumor without any cut marks has proven outcomes to overtake the traditional methods of treatment. With the flexibility of the treatment to be done in one to five sessions each of 30 minutes duration provides comfort to the patient and the maximum level of restricting the tumour from spreading further.

The main advantage of cyberknife radiation therapy is that it directly alters the individual deposits inside the brain without affecting the brain functioning. For treatment of metastasis such as melanoma, radiation therapy (cyberknife) may be the only option.