Читать книгу Leksell Radiosurgery - Группа авторов - Страница 16

GK centers report their annual treatment statistics to the Leksell Gamma Knife Society. Between 1987 and the end of 2017, 1.2 million patients were treated. Between 80 and 90 thousand new patients are added to the statistics every year. There are now around 330 active centers and a simple search for “radiosurgery” on PubMed yields approximately 15,500 titles.

Several factors have contributed to the exponential growth we have seen in the field of SRS. First and foremost is the development that we have seen in neuroimaging since the introduction of the CT scanner by EMI. The first such scanner in Sweden, and the second in the world, was installed at the Karolinska Hospital in 1974.

Also, in the late 1980s an increasing number of institutions started doing SRS with other technologies. First with linear accelerators adapted for use in stereotactic conditions and later with dedicated linear accelerators, including Cyberknife. This growing adoption of the methodology of SRS has helped propagate interest in the neurosurgical and radiation oncology community. Nevertheless, when looking at the literature and searching only for papers reporting outcomes in at least 30 patients, the published science is dominated by papers from the GK community (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10. Series reporting outcomes in 30 patients or more listed in PubMed in 2015.

The roles of the Leksell Gamma Knife Society, founded in 1989, and the International Stereotactic Radiosurgery Society, founded in 1991, also must not be underestimated. By organizing biennial meetings (in alternating years) dedicated to the subject of SRS, they have both helped in defining new indications and ultimately improving and expanding the use of radiosurgery and the science.

Finally, some centers have been very active in organizing training courses for their peers. For example, over the last 30 years, Dade Lunsford and his team in Pittsburgh have trained 2,200 neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists, neurotologists, and physicists in the proper use of SRS.