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Electro-Scalpel "Sniffs Out" Tumors
TechReviewAl writes "Researchers in Germany have developed a surgical tool that uses chemical analysis to identify cancerous tissue as a surgeon cuts. The instrument uses a modified mass spectrometer — a device that uses ionized molecules to perform very accurate chemical analysis — to pinpoint tumors so that surgeons can make sure they remove everything. Mass spectrometry has been used to study biopsied biological samples before, but never used in-situ. The key was to harness ionized gas already produced by the electro-scalpel."
"A high-voltage nitrogen jet is not compatible with the human body," says Takáts.
Well, I'm glad we've gotten past those experiments.
They actually found a use for the smoke that an electric cautery produces. Amazing.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The way I read it, it tells you what tissue you're cutting *when you're cutting it*, not beforehand. It doesn't "sniff out" cancer as much as that it tells you wether or not the thing you're currently damaging is cancer or not.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
But can it also disable Cybermen?
help fill in hidden movie endings @ End of the Credits
Cool, it's like a game of "cold... warmer... warmer... hot!" for cancer surgery... I can play that game!
If the tumor is found to have a vulnerable exhaust port, it could revolutionize cancer treatment!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The way I read it, it tells you what tissue you're cutting *when you're cutting it*,
It may take society a decade or more to figure out whether this tool is a net positive benefit to society.
Meanwhile, I anticipate the following problems:
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Assuming the device can be turned down to a very short 'probe' pulse, that damage could be minimalized and not much worse than would normally be encountered with any moderately invasive procedure. Losing on the order of 10s of cells for accurate diagnosis of the immediate area of thousands of cells is a good step.
Personally, I'd rather the surgeon have the ability to detect and remove all of a cancer from my body with only a little bit of extra scar tissue in the surrounding areas, rather than miss some of the cancer or remove healthy organs that just looked slightly different.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Trouble is that it doesn't "sniff out" the cancer, so while yes, it prevents removal of excessive amounts of good tissue, contrarily to what the headline implies it doesn't guide the surgeon to the bad tissue - he still needs to visually identify it, or alternately prod every bit in sight.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Of course, then I think it'd be nice to hook it up to an x/y scanner and have a computer do the work, so it'd just scan back and forth, and drill in wherever there's a problem until there's no longer a problem: a real-time version of current Mohs Surgery that they use for removing skin cancer while minimizing adjacent tissue damage/removal.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I'm not sure what exactly they use as a marker in this case, but I know that one distinguishing feature for cancer cells is increased oxidative stress that attacks membrane lipids. Due to this, cancer cells have much larger concentrations of small-chain alkanes than you would expect in a healthy cell. Using alkanes as your biomarker has the further advantage of their structural simplicity; you can just dial in on the mass of something like pentane or hexane molecular ions without having to do detective work on a bunch of fragments.
Since the shorter alkanes are highly volatile, there have already been experiments to show that lung cancers can be detected by GC-MS of collected breath, and even some experiments that dogs have a sense of smell acute enough to pick up on these markers.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
The headline is just part of the normal scienitific reporting genre. This is something that means we can do something better than we did it before. A small advancement, yes, but still advancement.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
instantly flash on the board game Operation?
Cool, although it has to be said that tumours (from the Latin, for 'swelling') can often be felt by the surgeon and often it is not difficult to delineate the margins required for a tumour. This would be most useful in cases of nonpalpable lesions (like a very tiny breast cancer or pre-cancer). The linked article does not reference any original publications, so it is difficult to know what they used as a control, what compounds they tested for (as the above posters have mentioned), if they were just comparing signatures against each other, etc.. Many methods have been touted themselves as the magic one for cancer detection/analysis: analysis of proteins in the serum (prostate specific antigen, I'm talking about you), compounds in urine, etc. etc. And the initial studies always look great. But time and again, when put into practice, the picture is never quite so clear as in the pilot studies. In the case of PSA, yeah, an elevated PSA says that there's something wrong with your prostate, but maybe it's just that your prostate's gotten larger, or it has a subclinical infection, or maybe there's cancer. There is a similar information about CA-125 for ovarian cancer. There is a bit more hope in this case, because this method actually samples tissue.
Thank you for that. I finally know what a mass spectrometer does, now, and why it's named that :-)
What a depressingly stupid machine.