Knife That can ‘Smell Tumors’ can Detect Womb Cancer Within Seconds

Breakthrough research conducted by Imperial College London researchers has discovered that a knife known as the iKnife can diagnose womb cancer in seconds. The ground-breaking surgical tool allows prospective cancer patients to avoid painful biopsies, relieving thousands of people of the stress of waiting weeks for results. This could allow thousands of women to get an earlier cancer diagnosis. “The iKnife reliably diagnosed endometrial cancer in seconds, with a diagnostic accuracy of 89%, minimizing the current delays for women whilst awaiting a histopathological diagnosis,” said the researchers in the finding published in the journal Cancers.

The iKnife is already being used to treat breast and brain malignancies, and it can now identify endometrial cancer as well.

Working of iKnife

The first study to test the invention was conducted nearly a decade ago, by collecting tissue samples from 91 patients with 100 percent accuracy.

The iKnife uses ‘electrosurgery’, a method commonly used today. "Electrosurgical knives use an electrical current to rapidly heat tissue, cutting through it while minimising blood loss. By doing so, they vaporize the tissue, creating smoke that is normally sucked away by extraction systems," the Imperial College had said in a statement at the time.

iKnife analyses the smoke emitted from the biopsy tissue when it is vaporized after being removed from the womb.

It achieves this by utilizing electrical currents to distinguish between cancerous and healthy tissue.

According to the recent study, iKnife was used on 150 women with suspected womb cancer. Researchers, in order to determine the effectiveness, compared the results to the current methods of diagnosis which typically take at least two weeks to show the results.

Implications of iKnife

"In cancer surgery, you want to take out as little healthy tissue as possible, but you have to ensure that you remove all of the cancer. There is a real need for technology that can help the surgeon determine which tissue to cut out and which to leave in," said Lord Darzi, who now holds the Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery at the Imperial College and co-authored the 2013 study, in a statement.

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He added, "This study shows that the iKnife has the potential to do this, and the impact on cancer surgery could be enormous”.

Womb cancer has one ‘red flag’ symptom of postmenopausal bleeding that should always get checked out on a two-week referral from your general physician. To wait a further two weeks for the results can be really hard for patients.

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The ability to provide a diagnostic test that rules cancer in or out immediately, and with accuracy, could make such a positive difference. There are different reasons for abnormal vaginal bleeding and womb cancer is just one of them.

Sadaf Ghaem-Maghami, professor and the lead researcher of the team that created iKnife, echoed a similar sentiment of the benefits of early detection, diagnosis and treatment as well as avoiding weeks of anxiety.

“With its high diagnostic accuracy of 89% and positive predictive value of 94%, one could immediately reassure the person of the very low likelihood of having cancer if the iKnife result is negative and expedite further tests and scans and treatment for people whose biopsies indicate presence of cancer,” said the lead researcher of the study.

Reference:

1. Point-of-Care Diagnosis of Endometrial Cancer Using the Surgical Intelligent Knife (iKnife)—A Prospective Pilot Study of Diagnostic Accuracy - (https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/14/23/5892)

Source-Medindia