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The Health pages of today's (July 5) New York Times contain an article by Jane E. Brody titled "Device Transforms Brain Surgery", the subject of which is a device called the Gamma Knife, which is used to perform stereotactic radiosurgery on brain tumors. The device aims 201 narrow beams of gamma rays so that they converge on and destroy the tumor. There is no incision and no surgical complications such as infection, hemorrhage and leakage of spinal fluid. The device was developed by Dr. Lars Leksell of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, with the aid of physicist Dr. Borje Larsson of the Gustaf Werner Institute at the University of Uppsala. The article says there are 20 Gammma Knife units in operation in the US, and lists University of Pittsburgh's Presbyterian Hospital, Rhode Island Hospital (Providence RI), Jackson Memorial Hospital (Miami) and Health South Doctors Hospital (Coral Gables FL) as having them. New York University Hospital will install a unit in the fall of this year. While the unit is used primarily against tumors, the article mentions that "neurosurgeons experienced in stereotactic radiosurgery are cautiously beginning to extend its use: to quell intractable facial pain in patients with trigeminal neuralgia, to relieve chronic cancer pain, to obliterate abnormal areas of brain tissue that give rise to uncontrollable epileptic seizures and to treat psychoneurosis, Parkinson's disease, and other movement disorders." Nothing further is mentioned about Parkinson's disease or where or by whom surgery for it has been performed. Phil