Thursday, July 18, 2013

iknife can tell cancerous from healthy tissue in seconds

Summary: A new kind of surgical 'Intelligent' knife can tell tumor from healthy tissue and may assist get better tumor taking away in the operating room.

iKnife, the tool analyses the vapour given off as surgeons use electrical current to cut away tissue - and it reports in real time whether the tissue is cancerous or not

Tests in 91 human patients have shown the "tool's diagnoses were extremely accurate," and may be "reliable enough to begin widespread use in operating rooms," said the study in the US journal Science Translational Medicine

The iKnife uses mass spectrometry to examine the surgical smoke given off by evaporating tissue, alerting the surgeon in three seconds as to what it contains.
Other current techniques - which include sending removed tissue to a pathology lab for analysis - are "costly...frequently inadequate," and take about 20-30 minutes, said the researchers from Hungary and Britain.
"Remarkably, there are almost no technologies in routine clinical practice to assist the surgeon in improving the accuracy of cancer tissue clearance," said the study.


Source: iknife

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