Chennai, Dec 15: For 10 long years, a young engineering student from Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh lived with a secret battle. His seizures did not always look like seizures sometimes they arrived as sudden bursts of inappropriate laughter, sometimes as blank stares or slow, involuntary nods. Teachers misunderstood it. Friends brushed it off. However, his family watched with growing fear as the episodes became more frequent and disruptive.
By age 23, despite multiple antiepileptic medications, the seizures had carved themselves into his daily life unpredictable, intrusive, and stubbornly resistant to treatment.
Advanced neuroimaging revealed the culprit: a hypothalamic hamartoma, a rare benign lesion buried deep in the left hypothalamus and extending into the third ventricle (Type 3 lesion). Its location complicates everything. It lies among the brain’s most vital passageways, including memory circuits, optic pathways, and endocrine control centres. Traditional surgery risks disturbing structures that cannot be disturbed.
At the Apollo Cancer Centre, a multidisciplinary team reviewed every option;
open resection, endoscopic disconnection, laser ablation, and stereotactic radiosurgery. Radiosurgery offers distinct advantages for treating deep lesions. It required no incisions, caused no brain retraction, and avoided the risks of disconnecting delicate limbic pathways. Unlike open and endoscopic techniques, which can affect memory or hormonal function, radiosurgery treats lesions without affecting the surrounding circuits. It delivers sub-millimetre precision, prevents heat spread associated with laser ablation, and has a far lower risk of endocrine complications. While invasive approaches require ICU care and recovery time, radiosurgery is outpatient, often allowing patients to resume normal activities within a day.
Given the anatomical complexity and the patient’s decade-long symptoms, the team recommended fractionated CyberKnife stereotactic radiosurgery, the safest high-precision option.
He received Cyberknife Radiosurgery, which was planned to sculpt the dose around critical structures while targeting the hamartoma. Seizure improvement after radiosurgery typically unfolds over several months. However, in this case, the response surprised even seasoned specialists: the young man became completely seizure-free within four weeks. His medications will be tapered gradually over a period of time.
There were no acute side effects no visual disturbance, no cognitive decline, no pituitary dysfunction. Follow-up assessments confirmed smooth and stable recovery, reinforcing the safety and precision of radiosurgical treatment for deep-seated hypothalamic lesions.
Dr. Shankar Vangipuram, Senior Consultant from the Division of Radiosurgery at Apollo Cancer Center, stated
“Hypothalamic hamartomas are some of the most challenging lesions we treat because they sit at the crossroads of memory, behavior, and vision. CyberKnife radiosurgery provides sub-millimeter accuracy without the morbidity associated with open or endoscopic surgery. What is often under-recognized is that radiosurgery is also a valuable option in several other forms of drug-resistant epilepsy, especially when the seizure-generating area lies deep or in regions of the brain that control essential abilities, such as speech, movement, or sensation. For instance, in mesial temporal lobe sclerosis in the dominant hemisphere, where young patients with excellent verbal memory (>90%) risk losing language skills with open surgery; in deep focal cortical dysplasia located in areas responsible for critical functions, where resection may cause permanent deficits; and in arteriovenous malformations that trigger seizures in regions vital for speech or motor control, where traditional surgery is a high risk. In such cases, radiosurgery offers a precise, minimally invasive pathway to control seizures while protecting the quality of life. The rapid and complete improvement in this young man is a powerful example of what this technology can achieve.”
Today, the student has resumed normal routines and is preparing to return to his engineering studies a future that had been repeatedly interrupted by a decade of seizures.
His recovery is a strong reminder that modern radiosurgery is reshaping the landscape of epilepsy care, offering precision, safety, and durable control for conditions that were previously considered exceptionally difficult to treat.