Spine Clinical Data

• Treatment of spinal tumors using CyberKnife fractionated stereotactic radiosurgery: pain and quality-of-life assessment after treatment in 200 patients. Gagnon et al. 2009. Mean pain scores decreased after treatments of spinal lesions using the CyberKnife System, and continued to decrease throughout the 4-year follow-up period. Quality of life was preserved.
• Stereotactic body radiotherapy is effective salvage therapy for patients with prior radiation of spinal metastases. Sahgal et al. 2009. Researchers from UC San Francisco treated 39 patients with 60 spinal metastases, over half of which had been irradiated previously, using the CyberKnife System. At a median follow-up of 8.5 months, encouraging levels of disease control without serious complications were obtained in all patients.
• Delayed radiation-induced myelopathy after spinal radiosurgery. Gibbs et al. 2009. In a collaboration between Stanford and University of Pittsburgh researchers, the records of 1075 patients treated with the CyberKnife System for spinal radiosurgery between 1996 and 2005 were examined. A total of six patients (approximately 0.6%) developed delayed spinal cord injury; authors recommended limiting radiation exposure to the spinal cord.
• Cost-utility analysis of the CyberKnife System for metastatic spinal tumors. Papatheofanis et al. 2009. Researchers from UC San Diego, Stanford, and the Aequitas group, showed in a cost-utility study that radiosurgery using the CyberKnife System was a cost-effective primary intervention for patients with metastatic spinal tumors compared to EBRT.
• CyberKnife radiosurgery for breast cancer spine metastases: a matched-pair analysis. Gagnon et al. 2007. Georgetown University researchers performed a comparison of external beam radiation therapy to CyberKnife System stereotactic radiosurgery for breast cancer metastasis to the spine. Outcomes were statistically comparable, even though most of the patients treated with the CyberKnife System had previously undergone external beam radiation therapy.
• Radiosurgery for spinal metastases: clinical experience in 500 cases from a single institution. Gerszten et al. 2007. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center performed the largest published study on spinal radiosurgery. Their results show that single fraction CyberKnife System radiosurgery is safe and effective both as a primary treatment modality and as salvage treatment for spinal tumors.
• CyberKnife radiosurgery for benign intradural extramedullary spinal tumors. Dodd et al. 2006. Stanford University researchers determined that benign lesions located on the spinal cord can be treated safely and effectively with the CyberKnife System.
• Multisession CyberKnife radiosurgery for intramedullary spinal cord arteriovenous malformations. Sinclair et al. 2006. Stanford University researchers used the CyberKnife System to treat spinal cord AVMs with fractionated stereotactic radiosurgery.