CyberKnife Tumor Treatment

Baptist Health Lexington: CyberKnife Tumor Treatment

Radiation oncologist ALAN BECKMAN, MD and neurosurgeon STEVEN KIEFER, MD describe how Baptist Health’s cancer team uses non-invasive CyberKnife surgery to treat certain kinds of brain tumors.

CyberKnife Tumor Treatment Health Talks Transcript

Alan Beckman, MD

Radiosurgery is defined by the precise delivery of beams of highly focused radiation directly to tumors. The term CyberKnife often makes you think of cutting, but CyberKnife is really a non-invasive alternative to surgery for many malignant tumors and even some non-cancerous tumors.

Debra Rooke, Lexington

In March of 2014, I was experiencing some, kind of like semi-stroke symptoms one morning, so immediately they had me in for a brain MRI, and it was discovered that I had a larger, very swollen area with a brain tumor. Dr. Kiefer immediately got involved and said the next option – and it was a great very hopeful, optimistic option – would be CyberKnife.

Steven Kiefer, MD

The CyberKnife is very much a multi-disciplinary endeavor. The surgeons work very closely with the radiation oncologists and the radiation physicists. We’re all a team that interacts very closely. There’s a lot of hands-on verbal communication and side-by-side work. The CyberKnife process is an outpatient procedure. It’s painless and requires no anesthesia. For localized small tumors, it often is the best treatment for that patient.

Debra Rooke

It’s pretty surreal to think what I was actually going in and doing, and it was saving my life.