Gamma Knife surgery in the management of orbital tumors

The authors evaluated the results they obtained using Gamma Knife surgery (GKS) in patients with orbital tumors.

This is a retrospective clinical evaluation of 202 patients with orbital tumors who were treated with GKS between September 1995 and October 2008. The series included 84 men and 118 women with a mean age of 39.5 ± 14.6 years (range 5-85 years). The diagnoses were determined based on pathological analyses in 113 patients and presumed based on characteristic clinical and imaging findings in 89 patients. There were 84 meningiomas, 38 epithelial tumors of the lacrimal gland, 23 schwannomas, 18 malignant choroidal melanomas, 12 optic nerve gliomas, 11 orbital metastases, 10 pseudotumors of the orbit, 3 retinoblastomas, and 3 cases of fibromatosis. The median target volume was 5.4 cm(3) (range 0.04-35.6 cm(3)). The tumor margin dose ranged from 10 to 40 Gy.

At a median follow-up period of 34.5 ± 14.7 months (range 12-114 months), tumor shrinkage was observed in 118 patients (58.4%) and stable tumor size in 71 patients (35.1%). Regularly scheduled neuroimaging studies demonstrated evidence of tumor progression in only 13 patients (6.4%): 9 of these patients underwent repeated GKS and 4 received surgical treatment. Visual acuity was preserved in 129 patients. Seventy-two patients experienced some degree of improvement in vision. Severe deterioration of visual acuity was found in 18 of 147 patients who had useful vision before treatment. Nineteen patients (9.4%) experienced transient conjunctival edema; no other serious acute side effect was observed.

Gamma Knife surgery provides an effective management strategy in patients with orbital tumors; it achieves excellent preservation of neurological function and is associated with few treatment-related complications.