Stereotactic radiosurgery and radiotherapy in the treatment of intracranial lesions

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT) is one of the high effective and minimally invasive treatment modality for neurooncologic diseases at the present time. SRS provides image guided radiation in the single fraction to the target volume defined stereotactically. The same navigation system also used in fractionated SRT but lower fraction doses applied to multiple fractions. Compared to conventional radiotherapy, fractionated SRT and SRS are more targeted therapy with low morbidities. The selection of the treatment modality should be done with respect to the patient and tumour characteristics. Parallel to the development of SRS technologies, neurooncologic application fields also increased. SRS/SRT commonly used in lesions such as vestibular schwannoma, skull base meningiomas, intracranial metastases, high grade gliomas, pituitary adenomas and craniopharyngiomas. SRS also used in the treatment of hemangiopericytoma, brainstem gliomas, oligodendrogliomas, recurrent medulloblastomas, juvenile pilocytic astrocytomas and low grade astrocytomas but new studies are required to define the role of SRS.