Steven Chang on CyberKnife
From Steven D. Chang, MD, on Brain Tumors and Cerebrovascular Disease · · Stanford Health Care
“Unlike the Gamma Knife, which requires a metal frame rigidly attached to the skull, the CyberKnife is a completely frameless system, so we can deliver radiosurgery with as high a degree of accuracy without the invasiveness of screws or a frame.”
On , Steven Chang, President of Quantitative Systems Pharmacology at SIMULATIONS PLUS INC, spoke about CyberKnife 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.