Radiosurgery for metastatic brain tumors

Since the life span of patients with metastatic brain tumors is quite limited, the aim of the treatment is to prolong their useful quality of life with minimally invasive therapeutic modalities. Although gamma knife radiosurgery (GKR) is widely used and accepted as a standard therapeutic modality for treating metastatic brain tumors today, there are still several problems to be clarified. The indication of GKR for metastatic brain tumors is based on the size, number of metastases, the state of primary cancer, systemic metastases, general condition of the patient, the radiosensitivity of primary cancer, the effective dose, etc. Although these problems have already been widely documented, the following recent papers have analyzed them more clearly. It seems that GKR is suitable for a single and solitary metastatic tumor of <3 cm in diameter, with a Karnofsky Performance Score of >70%, and there appears to be no limitation concerning the histology of the primary cancer and different radiosensitivity. The papers selected also cover the effect of GKR when combined with surgery and/or whole brain radiotherapy, and the limitations of GKR in the treatment of metastatic brain tumors.