Gamma knife newest tool in battle against cancer
by Daniel Wolowicz danielw@theacorn.com

For some, the expression “in sickness and in health,” holds little meaning.

For Bruce and Carol Scott, it means everything.

The Simi Valley couple has been married for more than 30 years, and during those three decades they have learned what it means to stand together no matter what the obstacle.

Their bond held them together through Carol’s diagnosis of breast cancer nearly 15 years earlier. It helped see them through Bruce’s battle with lung cancer last year, and it has continued to give them strength ever since Bruce was diagnosed with brain cancer last December.

Their struggles, though, may be coming to an end thanks to a new facility recently opened at Los Robles Medical Center. Shaded by a patch of pine trees, the small brick building behind the Thousand Oaks hospital is easy to overlook. It’s so new, in fact—completed in January—many Conejo Valley residents have no idea it even exists.

Although the building may look unassuming, it houses the Gamma Knife, an incredibly powerful new piece of technology that is helping doctors avoid high-risk surgeries and successfully treat a number of critical brain dysfunctions with noninvasive procedures.

By precisely focusing high doses of radiation for only minutes at a time, the Gamma Knife treats a number of brain dysfunctions, including tumors, bleeding vessels and a disorder known as trigeminal neuralgia that causes sudden bursts of face pain.

The Leksell Gamma Knife is the first of its kind in Ventura County and only one of a hundred in the United States. It’s so new, in fact, that Scott was just the third patient at Los Robles to undergo the procedure.

The $5 million machine looks much like a CT scan. A patient lies on a retractable table and is slid into position beneath the Gamma Knife, a large, spherical metal attachment that focuses 201 gamma rays to a precise location in the brain.

Undergoing Gamma Knife treatment requires a team of medical professionals. In Scott’s case, that included Dr. Paul Miller, a radiation oncologist; Dr. Ronald Young, a neurosurgeon; nurse Aiko Teragawa and Brian Copcutt, a physicist who ensures the accuracy of the computer’s calibrations.

The outpatient procedure typically takes most of a day, and for Scott, his day began with being fitted for a metal halo. The frame-like device ensures the doctors that the Gamma Knife is targeting the tumor’s exact location.

Next, doctors took a “picture” of Scott’s brain using a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine. The three-dimensional picture is taken for doctors to confirm the exact location of the tumor and to help them calibrate the amount of radiation needed.

Young said Scott was an ideal candidate for the Gamma Knife because traditional surgery would have been too risky and radiation would have been ineffective. He added that recovery time from the Gamma Knife is far less than the time it takes to recoup from openbrain surgery.

“(The Gamma Knife) is an extremely precise tool that allows us to focus the radiation to one specific place in the brain,” Miller said. He added that a Gamma Knife is best in cases where the tumor is too hard to get to with surgery. It also is less invasive than surgery for frail patients and helpful in cases where precise radiation therapy is needed after surgery.

Although success rates may be high, doctors need anywhere from a few weeks to a year before they are completely sure the tumor has been erased.

The concept of focused radiation, also known as radiosurgery, was first discovered by Dr. Lars Leksell more than 50 years ago. Although Leksell used a prototype of the Gamma Knife on patients in the late 1960s, it wasn’t until recently that computer imaging made the machine a truly effective tool.

“Improvements in digital imaging have made a huge, huge change in our ability to accurately identify what’s going on in the brain and then accurately attack it,” Miller said.

Although the Gamma Knife is ideal in treating hard-to-reach tumors, Young said cancer cases only account for about 60 percent of the total patients using the new machine.

Tremor disorders, bleeding brain vessels and other brain dysfunctions make up the remaining 40 percent.

Young and Dr. Skip Jacques oversee the Gamma Knife center at Los Robles.

Today, Scott is back at work as an audio visual technician at the Ronald Reagan Library, something that would have been impossible so soon after traditional surgery.

His wife said he was “out of it” after his treatment, but the two are hopeful the new technology may mean the end of Scott’s battle with cancer.

“We just hope that this will be the end of the surprises for us,” Carol Scott said. “We hope this will be the last of the treatments he needs.”

She said it was their bond that has helped them through this tough time.

“He supported me through my cancer, and of course, I’ve been supporting him every step of the way,” Carol said. “We’ll just take it one day at a time . . .That’s all you can do.”