Treatment of the Spine
“Saint Francis’ CyberKnife represents a true technological breakthrough. It is incredibly precise. I am able to save my patients from the pain, recuperation and blood loss that is associated with open surgery by instead treating them with the CyberKnife.”
Stephan Lange, M.D.
CyberKnife enables the minimally invasive and accurate delivery of aggressive doses of radiation to many spinal lesions. At the core of this surgical instrument is a miniature linear accelerator. This produces high energy therapeutic x-rays, attached to a robotic arm. While the robot arm moves extensively around a patient, x-ray beams are precisely targeted to the tumor from hundreds of different directions.
CyberKnife's ability to target and treat tumors and lesions, making allowance for minor movement due to patient breathing, eliminates the need for a rigid external frame to be attached to the patient's skeleton. Instead, the CyberKnife uses an x-ray image-guidance system that identifies the real-time position of the patient's anatomy. CyberKnife tracks the position of a spinal tumor with reference to either the skull anatomy (for tumors of the upper neck); or with reference to small stainless steel markers, called fiducials. These metallic markers are located near the bones of either the lower neck; the mid or lower back; or the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine in a short, outpatient procedure. Once in position, these fiducials can be automatically detected by the image-guidance system of the CyberKnife to determine the exact position of the tumor.
Throughout treatment, the system continually captures images and identifies these markers, communicating their updated position to the robotic arm so that it can precisely re-adjust the aim of the radiation beam to compensate for any small, natural movements made by a patient. This capacity to accurately target a spinal tumor without rigid external immobilization makes the CyberKnife a unique solution for treating many spinal lesions in the least invasive way.