My husband was diagnosed with a prolactinoma in 1995. It had been under control with bromocriptine until around 2002. The tumor started growing again and increasing the dosage of bromocription to high levels wasn't working. Switching to Dostinex didn't work but we realized later that was because the doctor did not prescribe the correct dosage. But that's another story. We decided that he had to have surgery but as he has a lot of other health problems and is in his late sixties we weren't happy about the idea. Somewhere on this board I saw something about Cyberknife and last summer we went to Georgetown U. Hospital and my husband went through the treatment. It was 5 days in a row, about an hour a day. It was painless and he felt fine after each treatment. He has had 2 MRI's since then and several blood tests. After the treatment his prolactin level shot up but the Dr said that it was as a result of the treatment. Since that time the level is down to about 1/4 of what it was before he was treated (1800 down to 400). MRI's show that the tumor has areas of darkness meaning that the tissue is dying and the area of tissue death increased from the first post treatment MRI to the second MRI. He is on Dostinex now. The worst of the potential side effects is damage to the optic nerve which can happen if the radiation is not aimed correctly. His vision is fine. He had some other side effects which we were told about before hand. Fatigue. loss of appetite, and headaches which started a month or so after treatment. The fatigue was quite pronounced and he was tested for cortisol levels and that seemed to be the problem. Since being on cortisol he has rebounded and is doing very well. The headaches lasted about a month and were easily controllable with Tylenol. I did read somewhere that someone had swelling in the brain and that was quite painful. I don't know what happened to them.. As I understand it, they can do cyberknife of the whole tumor if it's a certain distance from the optic nerve. My husband's tumor was not that distance and they couldn't do the whole tumor. However we were told that only doing part of the tumor might be acceptable if the prolactin levels fall and he can get conventional radiation to knock out the area that they couldn't do if it creates a problem. We were told that cyberknife can only be done once. So far so good. He goes back for a follow up in June. The doctors we saw were Dr. Jean, a neurosurgeon, and Dr. Gagnon, a radiation oncologist. Both were very knowledgeable about his condition and very helpful. | 