Only a one-day treatment is required rather than many treatments over several weeks and the treatment often can be repeated if necessary. Gamma Knife treatment can also replace brain surgery in some patients with brain tumors, vascular malformations and facial pain.

Gamma Knife radiosurgery is nearly 90 percent successful in killing or shrinking brain tumors or stopping their growth. And it doesn’t hurt or require anesthesia. Treatment takes just one session, and patients can return to normal activities almost immediately.

It may take weeks, months, a year (or sometimes longer) to see the full effects of treatment. For example, pain relief if you have trigeminal neuralgia can occur anytime between one day and six months, with most people improving within one month.

While many conditions only have a single target, the Gamma Knife machine currently used at Yale Medicine was designed specifically to treat multiple lesions. For patients with brain metastases, for example, the treatment of 15 to 20 tumors in a single day is no longer uncommon.

Object: Several adverse effects such as brain edema, necrosis, arterial stenosis, hemorrhage after obliteration, and delayed cyst formation have been reported as early and late complications of Gamma Knife surgery (GKS) for arteriovenous malformations (AVMs).

One to Two Days After Gamma Knife Surgery Many patients return to work one to two days following Gamma Knife radiosurgery, or you may choose to take it easy for a couple of days. You may experience headache, nausea, fatigue or irritation at the pin sites in the days after the procedure.

The direct cost for gamma knife (US $9677 ± $6700) is higher than that for open surgery (US $5837 ± $6587), P<0.01.

Gamma rays have so much penetrating power that several inches of a dense material like lead, or even a few feet of concrete may be required to stop them. Gamma rays can pass completely through the human body; as they pass through, they can cause ionizations that damage tissue and DNA.