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Cynthia Spaulding, MD
Central Virginia Radiation Oncologists, PC
Cindy received her medical degree from the University of Virginia, where she also completed her internship and residency. She is a board-certified radiation oncologist and is the founder of the Radiation Department at Martha Jefferson. She provides care to adults with special clinical interests in patients with breast cancer, head and neck cancer, GI cancer, prostate cancer and lung cancer. Cindy has two sons, both of whom are attending college. Her personal include gardening and cycling.
On June 3, 2009, Martha Jefferson Hospital treated its first patient with Stereotactic Radiosurgery. This was the culmination of an intense collaborative effort, in keeping with the hospital's culture of teamwork and the Cancer Care Center's practice of providing comprehensive, technically advanced treatment for cancer patients.
Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is a specialized radiation technique in which a single high dose of extremely collimated radiation with multiple convergent beams is delivered to one or more intracranial targets with submillimeter precision. This precise form of radiation may be used to treat a variety of brain lesions, including brain metastases, pituitary tumors, acoustic neuromas, and arteriovenous-malformations. There is a growing role for radiosurgery in the management of functional disorders as the focal radiation is helpful in reducing the tremors associated with Parkinson's disease, as well as the pain of trigeminal neuralgia. Stereotactic radiosurgery provides an alternative to invasive neurosurgery with equivalent cure rates. Advantages over neurosurgical resection include the ability to treat surgically inaccessible areas of the brain, as well as multiple lesions at the same time. Significantly, SRS is a noninvasive procedure that is usually provided in the outpatient setting and is more cost-effective than surgery. Complication rates are also lower.
The first radiation machine capable of delivering this type of treatment, a prototype of today's Gamma Knife, was developed by Dr. Lars Leksell, a Swedish neurosurgeon, in 1968. The Gamma Knife utilizes 192 radioactive cobalt sources and can be used only for stereotactic radiosurgery treatments. A parallel approach was developed beginning in the late 1980s, utilizing conventional linear accelerators, which can be modified for SRS treatments with a removable, specialized stereotactic delivery system. continued ...