Gamma Knife revolutionises treatment of brain lesions Hyderabad : Gamma Knife has revolutionised treatment of brain lesions by treating patients without surgery, according to Dr Dheerendra Prasad, Chairman of Gamma Knife Unit, Rosewell Park Cancer Institute, New York, USA.   At a talk on the latest developments in radiosurgery at the Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences here, Dr Prasad said the modality used high energy radiation by means of gamma rays, proton or photon beams. The lesion is cured by gradually.   This method could be used to deal with difficult to approach lesions in brain which could be deep-seated or small, he said adding lesions of less than 10 cumm could be treated using gamma knife.   Over 40,000 patients underwent this procedure every year in the  world.   The procedure which was minimally invasive and had maximum efficacy, took hardly two to four hours and the patient could return to work the very next day.   In radio surgery, the scalpel was replaced by highly-focused radiation beams which produced the desired biological effect at the precisely predeterminded target in the brain.   The procedure offered important benefits for medical practitioners too as it meant fewer complications. It had become a complementary procedure to micro surgery for small to medium-sized intracranial targets, he said ''Ionizing radiation is delivered from a total of 2.01 cobalt-6.0 sources arranged in a hemispherical pattern. The beams of gamma radiation always coincide at a fixed focal point within the radiation unit.   ''Each beam will only contribute with a small dose and have a minimum impact on the tissue on its way to the target, but in the focal point where all beams meet, the resulting close will give the desired therapeutic effect.   ''The close in the sharp focal point is very precisely defined, which makes it possible to treat targets very close to sensitive structures.   ''By combining focal points called isocenters, even the most complex shaped target can be covered with minimum impact on surrounding tissue,'' he explained.   The NIMS, which was in the process of upgradation on par with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, proposed to introduce this ''Gamma knife,'' Head of Neurology Department, Prof A K Purohit, told reporters later. Clinic installs 'Stryker three chip camera system' Chennai : Lotus Gall stone speciality clinic and Advanced Laparoscopic Surgical centre, has installed ''Stryker three chip camera system,'' a high definition camera for a ''no pain, no scar and no blood loss'' surgery to remove gall stones.   Talking to UNI, Dr P Satish said the latest camera, launched in the US in January this year, is introduced for the first time in Tamil Nadu for the benefit of patients, who can go home, a day after the surgery.   Using the high definition camera system, surgery could be done through ''mini laparoscopy,'' where a five mm incision (a surgical cut made in skin or flesh) would be made for the optics, which virtually gives no pain and scar.   ''As the vision is perfect, the high-tech bloodless surgery, reduces the possibility of surgeons making an error to almost nil and ensures that tissues around the gall bladder are not damaged,'' he  said.   The conventional treatment of a patient with gall stone was removal of gall bladder with stones. The treatment was open ''cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal through a 10 cm cut), performed till 15 years back.   With the introduction of ''laproscopic surgical technique (key  hole surgery), laparoscopic cholecystectomy became the treatment of choice, in which the scar was reduced from 10 cm in open cholecystectomy to just 10 mm for optics in key hole surgery.   In the key hole surgery, the scar reduces, blood loss is less and the hospital stay becomes minimal. After the introduction of ultrasonic haemostatic equipment (Harmonic scalpel), the blood loss has became nil and the introduction of the high definition camera system has brought about a revolution in the surgery, Dr Satish said.   The centre has invested about Rs 35 lakh for installing the latest equipment and Dr Satish, who has trained more than 2,000 surgeons in the state and other parts of the country, said that he wished all patients get access to the five mm surgery.   ''I am planning to train surgeons throughout south India in the  new technology,'' he said, adding fortunately, the incidence of gall stone was only one to two per cent in India, compared to nearly ten per cent in other countries. India to have food regulatory body New Delhi : India will soon have a food regulatory body to address issues such as food quality and safety, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said here Tuesday. "We have been concerned with integration of our food laws, many of them item-specific and dealt with by different agencies, and hence we have recently enacted the Food Safety and Standards Act as an integrated food law that will be administered by a single autonomous and scientific regulatory body," Ramadoss said while inaugurating an international food summit. "The body will be set up in four to five months and it will be headed by a food commissioner," he added. He said all tobacco products would from June 1 bear photographs of patients suffering from cancer caused by tobacco consumption as further warning. "We have tried everything but it has been of no use. So now we have decided to put scary photos of cancer patients on them to discourage consumers," he said on the sidelines of the summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN. The two-day summit, attended by participants from the US, Europe, Ireland, Brazil, Malaysia, New Zealand and Thailand, aims to create a roadmap for India on food standards and its implementation. Ray of hope for women on Motherhood Day New Delhi : From 407 in 1998 to 301 in 2006, the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) that marks the number of women dying at childbirth has been falling in India, albeit gradually. As India observes National Safe Motherhood Day Wednesday, it hopes to reduce the MMR rate, the number of mothers dying per 100,000 live births, to 100 by 2012. Aparajita Gogoi of the White Ribbon Alliance (WRA), an international body that works to ensure safe motherhood, credits the decrease in maternal deaths to the government's increasing "mother friendly" policies. India registers one of the highest number of maternal deaths in the world - a whopping 70,000 per year. But Gogoi, the national coordinator of WRA, says even the slow decline in numbers provides a ray of hope. "If you compare the Sample Registration Survey (SRS) data conducted in 1998, the maternal mortality ratio was 407. By 2006, the number had come down to 301. Now the government aims to bring it down to 100 by the year 2012. "While the decline is decent yet commendable, our aim is not just to bring down the number of deaths, but to avoid it completely. So yes, I think this is definitely a good, even if slow, start to the ultimate realisation of our goal," Gogoi told IANS. The WRA movement was launched in India in 1999, representing NGOs, donor agencies and committed individuals. To attract national attention towards the issue of safe motherhood, WRA appealed for the declaration of April 11 as National Safe Motherhood Day in 2001, which finally came into being in 2003. WRA has also been focussing on the issue of training auxiliary nurse midwives (ANM) and lady health visitors (LHV), especially in rural areas, in skills required during childbirth for emergency situations with the support of a functioning health care referral system. Most of the deaths occurring at childbirth and after are due to lack of adequate medical support. In response to this, the union health ministry had released guidelines for antenatal care and skilled attendance at birth for ANMs and LHVs on National Safe Motherhood Day in 2005. "The policies are now more mother friendly and more progressive. In light of all these changes, we hope to bring down the number of maternal deaths to nil very soon," Gogoi said. WRA plans to set up antenatal care check-up camps and counselling centres for pregnant women in Badarpur area of south Delhi to mark National Safe Motherhood Day this year. Girls from the area will also stage street plays on the basic theme of safe motherhood.