stereotaxic surgery

stereotaxic surgery, a three-dimensional surgical technique that enables lesions deep within tissues to be located and treated using cold (as in cryosurgery), heat, or chemicals. The first device for stereotaxic surgery was described in detail in 1908 by British neuroscientist and surgeon Sir Victor Horsley and British physiologist Robert Henry Clarke. This device, named the Horsley-Clarke apparatus, facilitated the study of the cerebellum in animals by enabling accurate electrolytic lesioning to be made in the brain. To ensure that a lesion would be introduced in the correct site, Horsley and Clarke created atlases containing pictures of the brains of the animals on which they experimented. Shortly thereafter, in 1918, the first stereotaxic apparatus for humans was designed by Canadian neurologist Aubrey Mussen. However, the first attempts at stereotaxic surgery in human subjects were not made until the 1940s; these attempts were pioneered by American neurologists Ernst A. Spiegel and Henry T. Wycis. Since then, a number of modifications and refinements have been made to stereotaxic devices, procedures, and atlases, and these advances have significantly improved the utility of stereotaxy.

Stereotaxic surgery is often used to locate lesions in the brain and to deliver radiation therapy. In procedures that involve the brain, such as ablation therapy in Parkinson disease, the head is held motionless in a head ring (halo frame), and the lesion or area to be treated is located using three-dimensional coordinates based on information from X-rays, computerized axial tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, or electrodes. In radiation therapy, stereotaxis is used to focus high-intensity radiation on localized areas to shrink tumours or to obliterate arteriovenous malformations. Stereotaxic technique also is highly effective for guiding fine-needle aspiration biopsies of brain lesions; it requires that only one burr hole be made in the skull with the patient under local anesthesia. Stereotaxic fine-needle biopsy also is used to evaluate breast lesions that are not palpable but are detected by mammography.