The CyberKnife makes a utopian dream come true: surgery without a scalpel. The method can help individual patients - but is not a miracle weapon against cancer. Subdued music trickles seemingly out of nowhere, dark wood covers the gently curved walls, drinks are available in the corner, concealed lights illuminate the waiting room. It doesn't look like a doctor's surgery, it doesn't feel like a doctor's surgery - and you won't find people in white coats here either: everything in the Munich CyberKnife Center on the campus of Großhadern University Hospital is designed to ensure that guests don't feel like patients. Yet the people being treated here are seriously ill. Many have a tumor growing in their brain, others are suffering from lung cancer. When they come to Alexander Muacevic, for some of them it is no longer about curing the cancer. Metastases, i.e. metastases spread throughout the body, often need to be treated. Neurosurgeon Muacevic and his colleagues treat their patients with the help of radiation. The doctors can do without white coats and the smell of disinfectant because they manage something paradoxical: they operate without a scalpel.