What are the four main rationales for Gamma Knife treatment of meningiomas?

  The World Health Organization classifies meningiomas into typical meningiomas, atypical meningiomas, and malignant meningiomas based on clinical and cytologic features, with malignant meningiomas accounting for 2-10%.  Treatment of meningioma is based on surgical resection. However, for meningiomas with deep location and many important neurovascular vessels around, complete surgical excision is difficult and recurrence rate is high. Even though surgical excision is possible for some meningiomas, serious complications and risk of death affect the efficacy of surgery. Therefore, postoperative treatment is mostly supplemented with general radiation therapy. However, practice has shown that general radiotherapy, although effective for residual clinical meningiomas, can often lead to more serious complications. Thus gamma knife radiation therapy is widely used in the clinical application of meningioma treatment.  Gamma Knife uses stereotactic technology to focus high-energy rays on the target area to achieve the purpose of treatment without incision or general anesthesia, and the patient remains awake and can even eat and drink during the treatment process, thus without any pain. Meningioma is a derivative of the meninges and meningeal space.  The main purpose of Gamma Knife treatment is to control the growth of the tumor, and its main treatment basis are: 1, meningioma is benign tumor, slow growth, can be treated with a lower dose, there is enough time to let the tumor slowly necrosis.  2. Meningioma can be diagnosed by imaging, and most of them do not require pathological assertion.  3.Membranoma can be easily visualized on CT or MRI with clear boundary, which is convenient for dose calculation and can effectively protect the surrounding tissues; 4.The incidence of meningioma is higher in the elderly, which is not suitable for surgical treatment.  A large amount of treatment experience shows that meningiomas on the convex side of the brain, especially paraganglioma of the sagittal sinus, are prone to long-term and severe radiation edema reactions even if they are small in size, and surgery should be preferred, and the residual part should then be treated with gamma knife. Skull base meningiomas with milder radiation reactions and larger volume can be treated with fractionated gamma knife. For elderly patients, due to the slow growth of the tumor itself, low-dose treatment can be used, the purpose is to control the growth of the main, the so-called “human tumor coexistence”.  Gamma knife treatment can effectively deal with meningioma, but to bring out the best efficacy of gamma knife treatment, it mainly depends on the patient’s specific situation.