Brain metastases are usually well-circumscribed and more or less spherical lesions. These conditions meet the criteria for radiosurgery (RS). A pilot study initiated by our group in 1983, demonstrated the effectiveness of Linac-RS in the treatment of solitary brain metastases with low radiosensitivity. A second trial including patients with 1-3 metastases started in 1990. By April 1993, 46 patients had been treated in this series. The radiation doses delivered to the tumour margin ranged from 10 to 25 Gy, and were chosen with respect to size, number and location of the tumours or previous whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT), decreasing mainly with increasing tumour volumes. 34/46 patients had a follow-up of more than 12 weeks. In 7/46 patients the disease progressed rapidly during the first weeks after RS and follow-up examinations were not performed. 5/46 patients had a follow-up of less than 6 weeks and follow-up CT/MR-examinations were not available. 14/46 patients received WBRT before RS. The regularly performed follow-up examinations (clinical status, CT-/MR-examinations in 6 or 12 weekly intervals) revealed tumour progression in 5/34 patients. Permanent cessation of the growth (11/34), tumour shrinkage (18/34) and decrease of surrounding oedema together with clinical amelioration have been observed a few weeks after radiosurgery. The median follow-up was 50 weeks. 14/46 patients died due to generalized progression of their disease.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)