Editing Radiosurgery (section)

===Brain and spine===
Radiosurgery is performed by a multidisciplinary team of [[neurosurgeons]], [[radiation oncologist]]s and medical [[physicist]]s to operate and maintain highly sophisticated, highly precise and complex instruments, including medical linear accelerators, the Gamma Knife unit and the Cyberknife unit. The highly precise irradiation of targets within the brain and spine is planned using information from medical images that are obtained via [[computed tomography]], [[magnetic resonance imaging]], and [[angiography]].{{cn|date=December 2021}}

Radiosurgery is indicated primarily for the therapy of tumors, vascular lesions and functional disorders.  Significant clinical judgment must be used with this technique and considerations must include lesion type, pathology if available, size, location and age and general health of the patient.  General contraindications to radiosurgery include excessively large size of the target lesion, or lesions too numerous for practical treatment. Patients can be treated within one to five days as [[outpatient]]s. By comparison, the average hospital stay for a [[craniotomy]] (conventional neurosurgery, requiring the opening of the skull) is about 15 days. The radiosurgery outcome may not be evident until months after the treatment. Since radiosurgery does not remove the tumor but inactivates it biologically, lack of growth of the lesion is normally considered to be treatment success. General indications for radiosurgery include many kinds of brain tumors, such as [[acoustic neuroma]]s, [[germinoma]]s, [[meningioma]]s, [[metastases]], [[trigeminal neuralgia]], arteriovenous malformations, and skull base tumors, among others. 

Stereotatic radiosurgery of the spinal metastasis is efficient in controlling pain in up to 90% of the cases and ensures stability of the tumours on imaging evaluation in 95% of the cases, and is more efficient for spinal metastasis involving one or two segments. Meanwhile, conventional external beam radiotherapy is more suitable for multiple spinal involvement.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Joaquim AF, Ghizoni E, Tedeschi H, Pereira EB, Giacomini LA | title = Stereotactic radiosurgery for spinal metastases: a literature review | journal = Einstein (Sao Paulo) | volume = 11 | issue = 2 | pages = 247–255 | date = June 2013 | pmid = 23843070 | pmc = 4872903 | doi = 10.1590/S1679-45082013000200020 }}</ref>