What are the side effects of Gamma Knife surgery?

With the continuous advancement of science and technology, medical treatment equipment has also been greatly improved. For example, people now have to undergo major head surgery due to illness, which may involve great risks. Many people are unwilling to take such a big risk, so they undergo gamma knife surgery. Then many people will definitely have questions about how big the risks of gamma knife surgery are. After all, it is related to physical health, so you must understand it in advance. Then I want to tell you that gamma knife surgery also has sequelae.

1. Complications

What are the complications after Gamma Knife surgery? Gamma Knife therapy is a surgical treatment method, so complications are inevitable. Here we will introduce to you the adverse reactions that may occur after Gamma Knife surgery. Radiation-induced cerebral edema: It usually occurs several hours to months after gamma knife surgery. The main manifestation is the expansion or aggravation of cerebral edema around the target, with a mild space-occupying effect. This is caused by reactive vascular or cellular infiltration, is effective for hormone and dehydration drug treatment, is reversible, and can gradually disappear with proper treatment without leaving serious sequelae.

2. Radiation-induced brain necrosis

This is a serious radiation-induced brain damage, which is more common after extracranial radiotherapy or inappropriate high-dose gamma knife treatment of large lesions. It is rare in clinical practice. Once it occurs, brain edema and swelling are extremely severe, often affecting one cerebral hemisphere, and may cause severe hemiplegia, aphasia or coma, and increased intracranial pressure. It requires long-term treatment. If brain herniation or malignant intracranial hypertension endangers the patient's life, craniotomy should be performed in time to remove the lesion and necrotic tissue to reduce pressure and save the patient's life.

3. Adverse reactions are relatively small

The above mentioned are the most serious and special cases. Generally speaking, the chance of side effects of gamma knife treatment is quite small. When performing gamma knife radiotherapy on patients, gamma knife doctors will make adequate preparations and control the radiation dose to reduce the occurrence of adverse reactions. In fact, the gamma knife radiotherapy process is generally non-traumatic, non-bleeding, does not require anesthesia, and does not require special preoperative preparation and medication. The operation is performed in a conscious and painless state. Through mathematical geometry principles, the error of dosimetric parameters obtained by computer processing is no more than 5%, and the treatment accuracy is high, even reaching the requirement of 0.3mm. Gamma Knife radiotherapy has good curative effect and few side effects.