Steven Chang on radiation therapy
From Steven D. Chang, MD, on Brain Tumors and Cerebrovascular Disease · · Stanford Health Care
“The CyberKnife is a machine to deliver a very highly focused beam of radiation to a tumor—unlike conventional radiation which is a wide field and exposes a lot of normal tissue, the CyberKnife is pinpoint accuracy, like a laser beam to zap a target within the brain.”
On , Steven Chang, President of Quantitative Systems Pharmacology at SIMULATIONS PLUS INC, spoke about radiation therapy during Steven D. Chang, MD, on Brain Tumors and Cerebrovascular Disease on Stanford Health Care.
About Steven Chang
In a 2009 interview for Stanford Medical Minutes, Steven D. Chang, MD, then a professor of neurosurgery and co-director of the Stanford CyberKnife program, discussed the treatment of brain tumors and cerebrovascular conditions. He described advances such as image-guided navigation and electrophysiologic monitoring, and explained the CyberKnife as a frameless, outpatient radiosurgery system that delivers highly focused radiation in a single session. Chang noted that treatment decisions for benign brain tumors depend on factors like size, symptoms, and patient age, with large tumors often requiring conventional microsurgery and smaller ones suitable for radiosurgery. Chang also addressed malignant gliomas, stating they are managed with a multimodality approach combining surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. He discussed arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) as abnormal blood vessels at risk of hemorrhage, with treatment options including surgery, radiosurgery, and embolization. For aneurysms, he described surgical clipping and endovascular coiling as available options, and for trigeminal neuralgia, he noted that medications often fail, leading to surgical interventions such as microsurgery or CyberKnife radiosurgery.