CyberKnife®

Rocky Mountain CyberKnife

Rocky Mountain CyberKnife offers a revolutionary new treatment for destroying harmful tumors which does not require surgery or anesthesia, and lets the patient go home immediately afterwards. The CyberKnife is a computer controlled radiosurgery system that delivers radiation to tumors in the brain, spine and elsewhere in the body with millimeter accuracy, while avoiding damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

This pinpoint accuracy of the CyberKnife allows for the treatment of malignant and benign tumors in the brain, spine, lung, prostate, liver, pancreas, kidney, bone and eye. It can also treat certain medical conditions such as blood vessel abnormalities and trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder that causes excruciating, electroshock-like pain throughout the face.

Advantages to Patients

The CyberKnife has many advantages over traditional surgery and other stereotactic radiosurgery systems:

• hard to reach, larger or inoperable tumors can be treated
• risks related to surgery, including potential infection, complications from anesthesia and post-operative bleeding are eliminated
• patients experience much less pain
• treatment is done on an outpatient basis, so the patient can go home immediately after the procedure
• the  need for a stabilizing frame bolted to the patient’s head is eliminated, so treatment is much more comfortable
• extremely accurate radiation targeting means higher doses of radiation can be used, offering the patient a better chance for cure
• tumors receive radiation from many angles, minimizing damage to healthy tissue

If you would like us to inform your doctor about this revolutionary CyberKnife technology, please email your name and your physician's name, address and phone number to clinical@rockymountainck.com

How It Works

CyberKnife is a robotic radiosurgery system that treats patients through a process called stereotactic radiosurgery, a noninvasive method of treating tumors and other medical conditions with high-dose radiation precisely aimed from different angles. CyberKnife continually monitors and corrects for tumor and patient movements, including breathing, during treatment. Patients lie on a treatment table while the machine's robotic arm moves around them, aiming targeted radiation beams from numerous angles. The cumulative dose of radiation kills tumor cells while minimizing exposure to surrounding healthy tissue. 

Before treatment, a patient undergoes a CT or MRI scan. Physicians use data from the scan to develop their computer based treatment plan and transmit the information to the robotic arm. The actual CyberKnife procedure usually takes about 40-60 minutes. Depending on the condition being treated and the size of the tumor or abnormality, there can be more than one treatment session but no more than five.

History of the Technology

For more than 30 years, physicians have been using stereotactic radiosurgery to destroy tumors in the brain, head or neck. While the procedure does not remove the tumor, it can destroy tumor cells or stop growth of active tissue.

In stereotactic radiosurgery, high doses of focused radiation beams are aimed into a tumor from several angles. With older systems, a metal frame is screwed into the patient’s head to immobilize the patient during treatment. This minimizes the chance that a patient’s movement will cause destruction of surrounding healthy tissue. Wearing this head frame is extremely uncomfortable for the patient, and it limits potential treatments to areas in and around the head.

The CyberKnife is the first radiosurgical system that does not require the patient to wear a head frame. Because the robotic arm automatically corrects for patient movement during treatment, the CyberKnife can be used anywhere in the body where radiation is effective.

The CyberKnife was developed by a team of physicians, physicists and engineers at Stanford University. The CyberKnife technology was cleared for commercial applications by the FDA in August 2001, and has been used to treat more than 100,000 patients worldwide.

About the Center

One of the first CyberKnife centers in the United States, Rocky Mountain CyberKnife opened in 2003, combining experienced physicians and the latest medical advances.  Formed through a partnership between Boulder Community Hospital and US Radiosurgery, Rocky Mountain CyberKnife was established as the first CyberKnife center in Colorado, marking only the eighth CyberKnife program operating in the U.S. at that time. As of March 2011, over 4,500 CyberKnife treatments have been performed and more than 1,500 patients from 35 different states have been treated at Rocky Mountain CyberKnife.

Rocky Mountain CyberKnife is a service of Boulder Community Hospital and is located at 905 Alpine Ave. in Boulder, Colorado, 80304. For more information call (303) 448-4620 or visit www.rockymountainck.com.

Click here for more information about CyberKnife technology.

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