Use of hybrid shots in planning Perfexion Gamma Knife treatments for lesions close to critical structures.

OBJECT: The authors investigated the use of different collimator values in different sectors (hybrid shots) when treating patients with lesions close to critical structures with the Perfexion model Gamma Knife.
METHODS: Twelve patients with various tumors (6 with a pituitary tumor, 3 with vestibular schwannoma, 2 with meningioma, and 1 with metastatic lesion) that were within 4 mm of the brainstem, optic nerve, pituitary stalk, or cochlea were considered. All patients were treated at the authors' institution between June 2007 and March 2008. The patients' treatments were replanned in 2 different ways. In the first plan, hybrid shots were used such that the steepest dose gradient was aligned with the junction between the target and the critical structure(s). This was accomplished by placing low-value collimators in appropriate sectors. In the second plan, no hybrid shots were used. Sector blocking (either manual or dynamic) was required for all plans to reduce the critical structure doses to acceptable levels. Prescribed doses ranged from 12 to 30 Gy at the periphery of the target. The plans in each pair were designed to be equally conformal in terms of both target coverage (as measured by the Paddick conformity index) and critical structure sparing.
RESULTS: The average number of shots required was roughly the same using either planning technique (16.7 vs 16.6 shots with and without hybrids). However, for all patients, the number of blocked sectors required to protect critical areas was larger when hybrid shots were not used. On average, nearly twice as many blocked sectors (14.8 vs 7.0) were required for the plans that did not use hybrid shots. The number of high-value collimators used in each plan was also evaluated. For small targets (<or= 1 cm(3)), for which 8 mm was considered a high value for the collimator, plans employing hybrids used an average of 2.3 times as many 8-mm sectors as did their nonhybrid counterparts (7.4 vs 3.2 sectors). For large targets (> 1 cm(3)), for which 16 mm was considered a high value for the collimator, hybrid plans used an average of 1.4 times as many 16-mm sectors as did the plans without hybrids (10.7 vs 7.7 sectors). Decreasing the number of blocked sectors and increasing the number of high-value collimator sectors led to use of shorter beam-on times. Beam-on times were 1-39% higher (average 17%) when hybrid shots were not allowed. The average beam-on time for plans with and without hybrid shots was 67.4 versus 78.4 minutes.
CONCLUSIONS: The judicious use of hybrid shots in patients for whom the target is close to a critical structure is an efficient way to achieve conformal treatments while minimizing the beam-on time. The reduction in beam-on time with hybrid shots is attributed to a reduced use of blocked sectors and an increased number of high-value collimator sectors.