Talk:Radiosurgery

Quite extensive text about radiosurgery. I would expect to find something like this under "Radiation therapy" rather than "Radiosurgery" (which is just a special case of radiation therapy, in my opinion). -Bluejonah- 13:25, 13 DEC 2004 (UTC)

I changed "gamma knife" from a link because a fairly complete description is given within this page itself. The alternative would seem to be moving the description of the gamma knife out to its own page. I noticed this because the term was on the request list. Osmodiar 01:49, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I will do the separate gamma knife article, I agree with you. Now, regarding radiation therapy vs radiosurgery, experts agree with me that it is a specialized form or fractionated radiation therapy, more accurate, with special use of stereotactic or image guided aiming, so that it should be allocated a separate article. Also, the radiation therapy article is already too large. --R.Sabbatini 00:19, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I fixed the wiki syntax of the external links, but the links seem to be broken. wrp103 (Bill Pringle) - Talk 04:04, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Radiosurgery (or is is two words?) is not just for brain cancer anymore. It is now being used for head and neck, lung and cervical as I recall. The newest machines are able to track and adjust to body movement. Bwood 20:23, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

→Hi...I work in an academic Radiation Oncology center in the States...new to Wikipedia. Radiosurgery is, indeed, one word. However, it is only used - really - for intracranial lesions and AVM. It can also be used for trigeminal neuralgia. When using it away from the skull/brain you are then moving into something termed 'extracranial radiosurgery' and basing your plan on a bite block. Not as precise as within the cranium, but they are definitely getting there. Regardless, it definitely is not for head/neck, cervical, or lung. Those would be IMRT and 4D gating procedures. Also, it is not truly a fractionated treatment. Fractionated treatments are seen as given daily, where stereotactic radiosurgery is a bolus dose delivered in multiple beams, sometimes broken down into different segments. Regardless...I thought I would offer my help. Please let me know if you would like me to insert/add/read over anything. Thank you Kate St. John 07:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for sharing your expertise. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:52, 15 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Three years later, stereotactic body radiosurgery is indeed being used to treat diseases outside of the brain. For example, the RTOG has an ongoing trial treating non-small cell lung cancer with SBRT (RTOG 0915). Japanese medical researchers have been at the vanguard of this treatment approach for NSCLC, and the RTOG trial is based in part on the Japanese literature. The NCCN guidelines for NSCLC incorporate eligibility criteria, fractionation schedules, and normal tissue dose limits for stereotactic radiosurgery.--BAW (talk) 18:16, 28 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I wonder if this article would pass a Good Article review. If there are regular editors hanging out, perhaps you'd like to look up the criteria and do an informal, off-the-record review. If it seems to meet the criteria, then you could propose an official review. (If it seems not to meet the criteria, then I'd definitely not propose a formal review until you've had a chance to fix any perceived problems or omissions.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:52, 15 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

i am a 28yr old white male regular smoker, born addicted, battling addiction, non-violent, high school dropout, ged diploma having, very misunderstood persona seeking answers to my so called disease and have stumbled upon this page. watching my grandfather(s) pass away after a chilling and real life on going cancer, makes me curious as to what effect this might have on the rest of my life as a human, can/are there doctors that dont judge!?

i try to help myself but am limited, this is a big huge world and there are many different explanations that have the same meaning. finances are the upmost importance in this world (from what i can see) and not all of us have the resourses that others do. this is troubling. we take care of animals before we do another human? yes we do.

i am just seeking advice, not going to take it to heart. all answers/replies are wanted!!! i was looking for different kinds of brain surgery and this "free encyclopedia" has taken me a step further.--nik65.164.140.141 (talk) 02:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'm responding to this 4 1/2 year-old question knowing that Nik, who posted it, will most likely never read this. Still, this situation is familiar to me, and I think many others are interested in the answer and don't know who to ask.

First, this is not a place to discuss such issues. Wikipedia article Talk pages are only for discussing the quality of the article, not for general discussion. Having said that, I'm gonna violate that rule too.

In modern medicine, doctors treat their patients as they are. They are not supposed to only help you if you change your ways. Doctors actually want what's best for you, so they will probably recommend treatment for your addiction because it might save your life, including your smoking addiction. But whether or not you follow that advice and sober up, they still want to help you. If you develop cancer as a result of these issues, it is still best for you that they treat the cancer without guilting you for how it came about. (They know that adding to your emotional distress will only make matters worse for you.) Medicine is a much more compassionate field today than it was a few decades ago. There are certainly a few old-school doctors out there who would have made better preachers than physicians, but no matter how messed-up your life has become, you deserve dignity, respect, and cutting-edge medical care every time you see a doctor. Best of luck to you. May you die old, healthy, and happy! Dcs002 (talk) 00:47, 21 November 2012 (UTC)Reply

I am not a doctor, but i have been a subjected to radiosurgey five years ago(I am nineteen now), and am now meant to go through with it again in a matter of days. I'm not sure how other outpatients' experiences with radiosurgery have been, but the thought of having to endure it once again almost makes me wish myself dead. So,I'm not sure that the extract 'The period of recovery is minimal, and in the day following the treatment the patient may return to his or her normal life style, without any discomfort. ' from the introduction to the article has any truth to it. Am I alone in suffering the disatrous effects of radiosurgey,both temporary and permanent, or should that section of the article be revised?

(155.239.144.101 (talk) 23:45, 30 April 2008 (UTC))Reply

I know the original poster probably won't see this, but I can give a general response in support of the side effect profile of radiosurgery. I'm not an M.D. neurosurgeon, but as a Ph.D. neuroscientist I have performed more than a thousand veterinary brain surgeries (after training and under the supervision of a doctor of veterinary medicine). That's my level of experience and education.

Stating that "the period of recovery is minimal" is fair because radiosurgery is used as an alternative to conventional surgery. Recovery times from conventional, open-brain surgery are measured in weeks and possibly months, depending on the procedure. Opening any body cavity is major surgery, and opening the brain case is particularly perilous. It involves cutting through bone and several protective membranes to expose what is perhaps the most vulnerable organ in the human body to damaging blood (toxic on contact to human brain tissue - why hemorrhaging strokes are so damaging) and the external environment, to say nothing of the risks involved with general anesthesia (which is not always used in open brain surgery).

Risks, adverse effects, and complications from radiosurgery are very minimal compared to conventional brain surgery, but that doesn't mean they aren't real and awful and possibly debilitating when they occur. The original poster is not alone in suffering from adverse effects of radiosurgery, but her/his experience is not what the majority of patients experience (which of course depends heavily on the type of procedure and the underlying condition it was intended to treat).

Even if your experience was terrible, even nightmarish, it's nothing compared to what you would experience with open-brain surgery. That's why the statement is ok as is. Neither your personal experiences nor my academic explanations are encyclopedic, but good references are pretty easy to find. Dcs002 (talk) 02:56, 21 November 2012 (UTC)Reply

Radiation sources and radiation safety are regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or state government agencies (states can opt out of NRC regulation by adopting their own state-level equivalent), and medical devices and their use are still regulated by the FDA. There is not simply one regulatory agency per device or per procedure. It's more complicated than that. The current text in this section implies that inadequate FDA regulation combined with a lack of NRC oversight led to the radiation overdoses mentioned.

I also find it troubling that under this heading of Risks this is the only thing that is mentioned. Dcs002 (talk) 03:14, 21 November 2012 (UTC)Reply

Dear all, I have rewritten the first sections of this page as I felt they didn't reflect the current ongoing controversies including developments of body radiosurgery, the definition refresh by Barnett, etc. I wanted to clearly state where radiosurgery comes from, how it evolved and what it stands for today, being a key tool in the minimally invasive treatment armamentarium. I plan to revisit the other sections on this page as well in the following days. Please share your feedback and suggestions for improvements and comments. malli (talk) 17:00, 4 June 2013 (UTC)Reply