AdventHealth Health Hub: Innovative Treatments For Brain Tumors

According to the American Brain Tumor Association, more than 700,000 Americans currently live with brain tumors. At the AdventHealth Neuroscience Institute, we offer some of the latest and most advanced therapies including GammaTile® therapy and Gamma Knife® radiosurgery, to offer new hope to patients with brain tumors.

AdventHealth’s minimally invasive brain surgery program includes a world-class medical team that uses these advanced technologies to treat complex brain tumors with great success. It is the team approach to surgery that is making the biggest difference. For example, when a patient receives treatment for a brain tumor, there are several highly experienced medical team members from different specialties always involved and collaborating on every detail of the patient’s care plan. This personalized approach to care, coupled with the precision of these new technologies, brings great benefits to all our patients.

What is GammaTile and how does it work?

Brain tumor patients can now take part in an innovative therapy treatment option called GammaTile. GammaTile is a surgically targeted radiation therapy which uses small collagen tiles embedded with radiation seeds that are placed at the site of a brain tumor immediately after it’s removed. The number of tiles used will depend on the size and location of the patient’s tumor. After the tiles are placed, GammaTile immediately begins delivering an even dose of radiation to the target area.

Over time, the body naturally absorbs the tile. It only takes about five minutes for the neurosurgeon to place the tiles, then the team closes up the incision. Most patients don’t require a longer stay in the hospital, hair loss is minimized and the need to possibly travel for radiation treatment after surgery is eliminated. At AdventHealth, we performed the first GammaTile procedure in Central Florida in early 2021, providing a new treatment solution for local brain tumor patients.

What is Gamma Knife and how does it work?

Gamma Knife is the gold standard for minimally invasive, precision radiosurgery for specific disorders of the brain. We use a very specialized frame that allows us to precisely localize an area of the brain that needs to be treated. We then focus multiple beams of radiation to a tumor, and virtually no dose of radiation to the surrounding healthy tissues. The accuracy of this system is less than one millimeter.

AdventHealth is the only hospital in Central Florida to offer Gamma Knife, and we’ve been offering this treatment since 1996 — with constant upgrades to improve the preciseness of our treatments.