A bit of a celebration in our radiation oncology department today as we celebrated the ninth birthday of a very important machine. The CyberKnife Stereotactic Radiosurgery System at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital was opened June 14, 2004 and to celebrate the nine year mark, SLUCare radiation oncologist John Dombrowski, MD, PhD, hosted a party with a CyberKnife Trivia Contest.
1) Who invented the CyberKnife?
John R. Adler, MD
2) What device was his inspiration?
A portable x-ray looking for structural stress fractures after a San Francisco earthquake
3) What date was the first Saint Louis University Hospital CyberKnife treatment
June 16, 2004
4) Approximately what month/year was the 100th patient treated?
May 9, 2005
5) As of May 13, 2013, how ,many patients have been treated with CyberKnife at Saint Louis University Hospital?
1,222
6) Approximately what month/year was the 1,000th patient treated?
June 10, 2012
7) When was the first extracranial treatment performed?
A spine patient on June 24, 2004
8) As of May 2013, how many patients were cranial vs. extracranial?
778 cranial, 444 extracranial
You may ask what CyberKnife is and why it’s important to the St. Louis area. It’s a noninvasive outpatient treatment without the risks and complications associated with traditional open surgery. The CyberKnife System uses enhanced radiation technology to precisely ‘paint’ tumors with beams of radiation, while sparing the surrounding healthy tissue.
For more information about the technology, visit our site here or contact us at (314) 268-7015.
Congrats team!
