A new machine is offering painless treatment for head, brain and neck tumours by precisely delivering radiation to targeted areas in the brain without making incisions.
The Gamma Knife Icon was installed at Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg and is the first of its kind in Africa.
It beams small doses of radiation, acting like a scalpel, onto a tumour from different directions.
"The way the Gamma Knife focuses the rays onto the tumour is very much like a magnifying glass focusing the sun's rays on a pinpoint and creating a burn at that particular area," said the hospital's Dr Maurizio Zorio.
A local anaesthetic is administered before a metal frame is attached to the head with screws drilled a few millimetres into the skull.
The patient undergoes an MRI or CT scan to determine the size and location of the tumour. The gamma treatment lasts between 20 and 90 minutes.
Zorio said the doses were small, but the "accumulative dose to the tumour is going to be very high".
The machine was installed in April, but it took about two years to bring the machine to South Africa.
Zorio said doctors first started using radiosurgery in the early 1990s, but found it was not as accurate as the Gamma Knife.
Netcare CEO Dr Richard Friedland hopes the Gamma Knife will be available to the "most vulnerable who depend on state healthcare".
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