The Downside of Radiosurgery, Possible Complications

Abstract

As a consequence of various last century scientific and technological advances radiotherapy and stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) have emerged as safe and efficacious techniques for the treatment of various intracranial pathologies. Recent improvements such as in brain and tumor imaging, patient immobilization, 3D planning and radiation delivery allow it to target lesions more accurately and minimize radiation delivered to normal brain, leading to drastic improvements in terms of safety and post-therapy complication. Despite that SRS still implies in moderate to severe side effects in one fifth to one fourth of patients. Fortunately the most common SRS complications, such as edema, blood brain barrier breakdown and MRI abnormalities are self-limited and amenable to treatment. The precise pathophysiological processes of SRS complications are still under research, however multiple factors including treatment dose, modality and planning complexity, target size, shape and location are known to affect treatment results. The most reported potential SRS complications are ischemic stroke, brain or lesion hemorrhage, radiosurgeryinduced neoplasm, radiation necrosis, white matter changes, cranial nerve dysfunction and cognition problems. SRS induced neurological complications may persist only in as much as 5% of patients.