Dr. Jeffrey Bradley, Radiation Oncologist at Washington University in St. Louis, describes the use of stereotactic radiosurgery and stereotactic radiation therapy.

Transcript

Stereotactic radiosurgery and stereotactic radiation therapy are techniques used to deliver high doses of radiation therapy with very tight dose distributions to one or a few lesions, let’s say in the brain or in the body. If it’s a single fraction of treatment, it’s called stereotactic radiosurgery. The classic example of that is radiosurgery to a brain metastasis, or something like that.

Stereotactic radiation therapy, or stereotactic body radiation therapy uses five or fewer fractions — so somewhere between two and five fractions, and sites for that can be brain, lung, liver, spine, various places throughout the body where you really want to deliver a high dose that eradicates the tumor, kills the tumor cells, and do it with minimal normal tissue toxicity.