WEDNESDAY, Sept. 6, 2017 (HealthDay News) — A new “cancer pen” promises to help surgeons immediately detect and completely remove cancerous tumor tissue, without having to send samples off to a lab for testing while the patient languishes on the table.
The MasSpec Pen is a hand-held device that allows doctors to test in real-time whether tissue is cancerous or not, delivering results in about 10 seconds, researchers report.
The pen will make it easier to surgically clear out all the cancer cells surrounding a tumor, explained senior researcher Livia Eberlin, an assistant professor of chemistry with the University of Texas at Austin.
In particular, cancers such as those of the breast, pancreas and brain”tend to invade surrounding normal tissue,” Eberlin said. “For a surgeon, it can be really tricky, because these cells resemble normal tissue. Just judging by [the] eye, it can be very challenging.”
The pen’s accuracy currently stands at more than 96 percent, based on tests that used tissues removed from 253 cancer patients.
[“Source-webmd”]