Cyber Knife, one of the most advanced forms of radiosurgery, is a painless, non-invasive treatment that delivers high doses of precisely targeted radiation to destroy tumours or lesions within the body. It uses a robotic arm to deliver highly focused beams of radiation.

• Radiation therapy uses focused beams of intense energy to destroy cancer cells and shrink or control the growth of tumours. Radiation therapy works by preventing targeted cells from multiplying.
• The objective is to destroy harmful cells whether minimizing the death of normal cells.

Radiosurgery is a form of radiation therapy that uses precisely targeted radiation to destroy tumours. Radiosurgery is non-invasive, there is no cutting involved

Advantages of cyber knife for brain cancer over other radiosurgery:

• Cyber Knife treatment is used to treat conditions in the brain, including benign and malignant primary tumours, brain metastases, trigeminal neuralgia, acoustic neuromas and arteriovenous malformations (AVMs).
• Brain is a crucial part of the part and as well as very sensitive, a small mistake can cause a huge damage.
• Cyber knife is used over other radiotreatment to treat most sensitive parts and cause no harm to brain tissues involved in different important activities like hearing and memory.
• It is 'proven to deliver to a sub millimetre precision, so that it can cause at all no harm to the surrounding healthy tissues.
• In other treatment frame is attached to the patient's skull to reduce movement, but in cyber knife the robotic arm adjust for the movement so that no frame is needed.
• It can treat those parts of the brain which can't be treated by frame modelled system, such as gamma knife.
• It is non-invasive and pain free, and doesn't require any over night stay in hospital or there is no recovery risk associated with it.

Procedure of cyber knife:

• Certain diagnostic test and imaging is done such as PET Scan, CT scan, MRI etc to look for the exact position of the tumour.
• Cyber knife does not require patients to be fitted with a rigid and invasive head frame. Instead, a custom-fitted mesh mask is given to keep the head and neck still during treatment
• The correct treatment plan, dose and other things are programmed in the cyber knife computer to deliver correct amount of radiation.
• Cyber knife system's computer-controlled robot will move around the body to various locations from which it will deliver radiation
• Patients can quickly recover to their daily routines without any recovery risk.

Side effects of cyber knife for brain cancer:

The side effects of cyber knife are very minimal compared to other technique. Most of the side effects soon get resolved in some days after treatment. Some side effects may include:

• Headache
• Dizziness
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Hair fall from the areas of radiation.