Women suspected of having womb cancer often have to wait weeks for a diagnosis – valuable time when treatment may have already begun. But a knife could shorten this time to seconds in the future.
A surgical knife that “smells tumors” can diagnose uterine cancer in seconds. This was discovered by a research team at Imperial College in London, as the British “Guardian” reports. Accordingly, the so-called iKnife, which is already being used to treat breast and brain tumors, can also detect uterine cancer.
“The iKnife reliably diagnoses cervical cancer in seconds with a diagnostic accuracy of 89 percent, minimizing the current delays for women waiting for a histopathological diagnosis,” the researchers write in the journal Cancers. “The results presented in this study may pave the way for new diagnostic avenues.”
The procedure for diagnosing with the knife is relatively simple in contrast to conventional methods. First, a sample of tissue is taken from the uterus and vaporized. The resulting smoke is then analyzed with the “iKnife”. The knife uses electrical currents to differentiate between cancerous tissue and healthy tissue. Currently, the removed tissue has to be sent to the laboratory, where specialists examine it under a microscope for cancer cells. In the future, when doctors have an “iKnife” in their office, the diagnosis could be made in minutes.
Such a quick diagnosis could allow women to start treatment sooner. Those who don’t eventually get a cancer diagnosis would avoid weeks of stress with the quick “iKnife” method.
“The iKnife has the potential to completely revolutionize the way we treat patients who come to emergency clinics with significant abnormal vaginal bleeding and are referred for a possible diagnosis of uterine cancer,” says Sadaf Ghaem-Maghami, Professor at Imperial College London and leader of the study, the “Guardian”. “With its high diagnostic accuracy, one could immediately reassure patients that if the ‘iKnife’ result is negative, the chance of developing cancer is very small.”
According to the research team, the effectiveness of the procedure was demonstrated using tissue samples from 150 women suspected of having uterine cancer. The results were compared to current diagnostic methods. The team is planning a large-scale clinical trial that could lead to widespread use.
(This article was first published on Wednesday, January 04, 2023.)
