Gamma Knife

Technology, Experience And Personalized Care: The Driving Forces Behind One Of The Nation’s Busiest Gamma Knife^® Programs 

With one of the most experienced and busiest Gamma Knife programs in the country, Wake Forest Baptist is using the latest in state-of-the-art technology to provide patients throughout the Southeast with the best possible care and treatment for a broad range of benign and malignant brain tumors and arteriovenous malformations.

The Medical Center’s physicians saw their first patient in August 1999; since then, they have treated more than 3,000 patients with metastases, meningiomas, trigeminal neuralgia, pituitary adenomas and a number of other conditions that were formerly difficult to treat or untreatable.

Led by Stephen B. Tatter, MD, PhD, professor of neurosurgery, Thomas L. Ellis, MD, associate professor of neurosurgery, and radiation oncologist Michael D. Chan, MD, assistant professor, the Gamma Knife program offers patients access to some of the most experienced clinicians in the world in the use of this technology. 

“Most patients are gratified by their experience,” said Tatter. “When they have a question about trigeminal neuralgia, for example, we know the answer. We’re writing papers about it and we’ve taken care of so many people with it.”  

While both the technology and experience are essential,  Tatter insists that what really makes this program stand out  is the attention to personalized care. Each patient’s primary clinician is a member of the faculty, not a resident or fellow, and this personalized care lasts through the entirety of the treatment cycle.

“Our residents and fellows participate, but patients feel like it’s the faculty who are their primary physicians,” said Tatter. “They are getting a level of personalized care that matters.”

Wake Forest Baptist’s Gamma Knife specialists regularly see patients from North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and beyond, including Alaska. Their findings and expertise are shared with the residents and fellows they train and the greater physician community through presentations at regional and national meetings.

This year, Wake Forest Baptist was named the world’s first Leksell Center of Radiosurgery and is an international training site for teaching procedures and protocols for stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT).