Whole-body Radiosurgery with the Cyberknife

In the 1950”s, Professor Lars Leksell of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden coined the term “radiosurgery” to define a neurosurgical procedure that combined precision targeting with a large number of cross-fired beams of ionizing radiation. By directing a very large dose of highly collimated radiation at a discrete location in the brain, the objective of Leksell’s operation was to make a lesion (ablate brain tissue) without “cutting”, arguably thereby achieving the ultimate in minimally-invasive surgery. At the time (1950’s and 60’s) the clinical motivation for such a procedure was a class of operations broadly referred to as functional neurosurgery which includes thalamotomy for the tremor of Parkinson’s disease and anterior capsulotomy for treating obsessivecompulsive disorder.