ELEKTA TO DELIVER LEKSELL GAMMA KNIFE® PERFEXION™ TO UPMC

UPMC, one of the leading radiosurgery centers in the world, was the first site in the U.S. to incorporate Gamma Knife radiosurgery into its neurosurgery program in 1987. Today, more than 8,000 patients with different types of brain disorders have been treated with Gamma Knife surgery at UPMC. This center has also assisted in the training of most of the neurosurgical, radiation oncology and medical physicist practitioners of Gamma Knife radiosurgery in the U.S., sponsoring over 54 one-week courses in the field of radiosurgery during the last ten years.

With Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion, Elekta expands the Gamma Knife product line with a completely new system that takes stereotactic radiosurgery to the next level and provides a platform for further refinement and expansion of radiosurgery procedures in the brain, cervical spine and head & neck regions.

Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion allows for a dramatically increased treatable volume, which is estimated to increase the number of patients who can benefit from Gamma Knife surgery by up to 40 percent. The fully automated and efficient single push button approach is expected to save 3-5 working weeks of physician time per year at an average Gamma Knife center.

"The design features of the new Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion, together with elegant software, will allow us to perform radiosurgery with unparalleled sophistication and efficiency. We will have virtually unlimited ability to bend and conform radiation to fit our needs,” states Douglas Kondziolka, MD, MSc, FRCSC, FACS, Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology at UPMC.

Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion has been developed by Elekta in close collaboration with leading neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists and physicists from Europe and the U.S. Dr. Douglas Kondziolka and Dade Lunsford have served as advisors in the development and redesign of this latest generation Leksell Gamma Knife.

“It has been an exciting process to initially provide input into this extensive development project and to now witness the result which meets and actually exceeds our expectations,” said Dr. L. Dade Lunsford, M.D., Lars Leksell Professor of Neurological Surgery at UPMC. “Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion will allow us to care for patients with even more refined methods and more efficiency.”

Currently installed and in clinical operation at Hôpital la Timone (Timone University Hospital) in Marseille, France, the first patients were successfully treated with Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion in mid-July. In a report on the first 30 patients treated with the new system presented at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois, in October, the team in Marseille concluded, “In this preliminary experience, Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion is turning out to represent a great improvement over other radiosurgical technologies and even over earlier Gamma Knife systems. Our overall feeling is that this new generation platform for radiosurgery is a real quantum leap for radiosurgery technology and appears to make radiosurgery even easier, faster and safer than before.”

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