Elekta to gather surgeons<br>on conference in Seoul

At the meeting, Kim Dae-jung, former President of the Republic of Korea and the year 2000 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate will be installed as honorary chairman of the Society, joining Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, who was installed at the 11th Society meeting held in Prague, 2002. Gamma Knife surgery is the gold standard in high-precision radiation treatment and the gold standard in non-invasive brain surgery. Replacing the saw and the scalpel with highly focused radiation beams which produce the desired biological effect at a precisely predetermined target in the brain, the patient can usually leave the hospital on the day of treatment. Since its introduction, Gamma Knife surgery has revolutionized the treatment of brain disorders and today this treatment is offered by hundreds of leading hospitals and clinics around the world. Nearly 50,000 patients undergo Gamma Knife surgery every year, and this unique procedure has earned an outstanding scientific track record with thousands of peer reviewed articles on treatment efficacy, improved quality of life for patients and cost efficiency. In fact, no other alternative treatment in this field has gained greater clinical acceptance. "In Korea we will soon have 10 Gamma Knife Centers and I understand that until today Korean neurosurgeons working with this technology have been able to help more than 12,000 Korean citizens to obtain non-invasive brain surgery for different kinds of brain disorders. This represents an important advance for Korean medicine", Kim Dae-jung says in his welcome message to the Society Members. In the scientific program, the Society Members will be able to choose from more than 240 clinical presentations all presented by Gamma Knife users and other clinicians, including how Gamma Knife surgery has been applied to solitary and multiple brain metastases, vestibular schwannomas, vascular malformations, functional disorders such as trigeminal neuralgia and epilepsy and some eye disorders. "The biannual meeting of the Leksell Gamma Knife Society is an important event for sharing the latest clinical advancements in stereotactic radiosurgery, says Dan Leksell, MD, responsible for Elekta's clinical research programs. The continuous open sharing and transfer of expertise, knowledge and experience, allowing a new Gamma Knife center to quickly achieve the same standard as an experienced center, has over the years been a key to the success of Gamma Knife surgery. The subsequent publication of the proceedings of the Society Meetings as a supplement to the Journal of Neurosurgery, one of two premiere journals in the field of neurosurgery, also allows other neurosurgeons as well as neurologists, oncologists, otologists and ophthalmologists to gain knowledge of the possibilities offered with Gamma Knife surgery and the most recent advances made", Dan Leksell concludes.