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An interesting breakthrough.
Surgeons light up cancer
cells in attempt to cut
relapses
Doctors believe use of fluorescent dye could boost survival
rates by guiding them to tiny clusters of malignant cells
A view of how fluorescent dye illuminates cancer cells inside the body of an ovarian
cancer patient
A group of women with ovarian tumours have become the first in the world
to have surgery using a procedure that makes cancer light up in the body.
Operations were performed on 10 women as part of the first phase of a
clinical trial to evaluate the technique, called fluorescence-guided surgery.
Doctors developed the procedure to help surgeons remove malignant tissue
from ovarian cancer patients and reduce the risk of the disease returning
months and years later.
The method illuminates cancer cells inside a patient's body to make it
easier for surgeons to spot smaller cancers that can be easily missed, and
to help them identify the borders between tumours and the healthy tissues
that surround them.
Figures from 2008 show that 6,537 women were diagnosed with ovarian
cancer and 4,373 died from the disease, according to Cancer Research UK.
The disease is more likely to return if malignant cells remain in the body
after surgery.
Many ovarian cancer patients have operations to remove or reduce the
size of tumours before they receive other anti-cancer treatments, such as
chemotherapy. But distinguishing tumours from healthy tissue can be
difficult, with surgeons relying on a combination of feel and appearance to
decide what material to remove.
With the new technique, surgeons could spot clusters of cancer cells as
small as one tenth of a millimetre across, compared with around 3mm using
visual and manual inspections. Doctors believe it will reduce relapses in the
disease, caused by malignant tissue re-growing after patients have had
surgery.
"Ovarian cancer is notoriously difficult to see, and this technique allowed
surgeons to spot a tumour 30 times smaller than the smallest they could
detect using standard techniques," said Philip Low at Purdue University in
Indiana. "By dramatically improving the detection of the cancer, by literally
lighting it up, cancer removal is dramatically improved."
Doctors performed operations on 10 women aged 41 to 76. Five had benign
tumours, four had malignant cancer and one had a borderline tumour.
Before surgery, patients were injected with a liquid that contained a
fluorescent dye attached to a chemical called folate. These build up in
ovarian tumours because they contain more "folate receptors" than healthy
tissue. During surgery, patients lay under a camera system that shone
laser light on to the body. It detected which cells fluoresced and displayed
them on a screen beside the patients.
"You see the image in real time as you work. You can zoom in and operate
using the fluorescence," said Gooitzen van Dam, a cancer surgeon who led
the study at Groningen University in the Netherlands. The operations are
described in the journal Nature Medicine.
The surgeons found on average 34 tumours, compared with just seven
picked up by traditional observations alone.
"This system is very easy to use and fits seamlessly into the way surgeons
do open and laparoscopic surgery, which is the direction most surgeries are
headed in the future," Van Dam said. "I foresee it becoming a new standard
in cancer surgery in a very short time."
Much larger trials over longer periods are needed before doctors can be
sure the procedure improves survival from ovarian cancer, but it is known
already that follow-up treatments, including chemotherapy and
radiotherapy, are more successful when less cancerous tissue is left in the
body.
"What we are really after is a better outcome for patients, but if we had
instead designed the clinical trial to evaluate the impact of fluorescence
guided surgery on life expectancy, we would have had to follow patients
for years," Low said.
"By instead evaluating if we can identify and remove more malignant tissue
with the aid of fluorescence imaging, we are able to quantify the impact of
this novel approach within two hours after surgery. We hope this will allow
the technology to be approved for general use in a much shorter time."
The team has ethical approval to trial the system on breast cancer
patients and expects to perform several operations in the next two
months. The method should reduce cases where too much breast tissue is
removed, a problem that can lead to more mastectomies and more complex
cosmetic surgery after cancer treatment.
Surgeons light up cancer cells in attempt to cut relapses | Science | The Guardian
See it in action here:
http://bcove.me/8mmu92rb
Ovarian tumour cells tagged with a fluorescent
probe glow white (right), making it easier for
surgeons to remove them.
InshaAllah this will boost survival rates.
Surgeons light up cancer
cells in attempt to cut
relapses
Doctors believe use of fluorescent dye could boost survival
rates by guiding them to tiny clusters of malignant cells
A view of how fluorescent dye illuminates cancer cells inside the body of an ovarian
cancer patient
A group of women with ovarian tumours have become the first in the world
to have surgery using a procedure that makes cancer light up in the body.
Operations were performed on 10 women as part of the first phase of a
clinical trial to evaluate the technique, called fluorescence-guided surgery.
Doctors developed the procedure to help surgeons remove malignant tissue
from ovarian cancer patients and reduce the risk of the disease returning
months and years later.
The method illuminates cancer cells inside a patient's body to make it
easier for surgeons to spot smaller cancers that can be easily missed, and
to help them identify the borders between tumours and the healthy tissues
that surround them.
Figures from 2008 show that 6,537 women were diagnosed with ovarian
cancer and 4,373 died from the disease, according to Cancer Research UK.
The disease is more likely to return if malignant cells remain in the body
after surgery.
Many ovarian cancer patients have operations to remove or reduce the
size of tumours before they receive other anti-cancer treatments, such as
chemotherapy. But distinguishing tumours from healthy tissue can be
difficult, with surgeons relying on a combination of feel and appearance to
decide what material to remove.
With the new technique, surgeons could spot clusters of cancer cells as
small as one tenth of a millimetre across, compared with around 3mm using
visual and manual inspections. Doctors believe it will reduce relapses in the
disease, caused by malignant tissue re-growing after patients have had
surgery.
"Ovarian cancer is notoriously difficult to see, and this technique allowed
surgeons to spot a tumour 30 times smaller than the smallest they could
detect using standard techniques," said Philip Low at Purdue University in
Indiana. "By dramatically improving the detection of the cancer, by literally
lighting it up, cancer removal is dramatically improved."
Doctors performed operations on 10 women aged 41 to 76. Five had benign
tumours, four had malignant cancer and one had a borderline tumour.
Before surgery, patients were injected with a liquid that contained a
fluorescent dye attached to a chemical called folate. These build up in
ovarian tumours because they contain more "folate receptors" than healthy
tissue. During surgery, patients lay under a camera system that shone
laser light on to the body. It detected which cells fluoresced and displayed
them on a screen beside the patients.
"You see the image in real time as you work. You can zoom in and operate
using the fluorescence," said Gooitzen van Dam, a cancer surgeon who led
the study at Groningen University in the Netherlands. The operations are
described in the journal Nature Medicine.
The surgeons found on average 34 tumours, compared with just seven
picked up by traditional observations alone.
"This system is very easy to use and fits seamlessly into the way surgeons
do open and laparoscopic surgery, which is the direction most surgeries are
headed in the future," Van Dam said. "I foresee it becoming a new standard
in cancer surgery in a very short time."
Much larger trials over longer periods are needed before doctors can be
sure the procedure improves survival from ovarian cancer, but it is known
already that follow-up treatments, including chemotherapy and
radiotherapy, are more successful when less cancerous tissue is left in the
body.
"What we are really after is a better outcome for patients, but if we had
instead designed the clinical trial to evaluate the impact of fluorescence
guided surgery on life expectancy, we would have had to follow patients
for years," Low said.
"By instead evaluating if we can identify and remove more malignant tissue
with the aid of fluorescence imaging, we are able to quantify the impact of
this novel approach within two hours after surgery. We hope this will allow
the technology to be approved for general use in a much shorter time."
The team has ethical approval to trial the system on breast cancer
patients and expects to perform several operations in the next two
months. The method should reduce cases where too much breast tissue is
removed, a problem that can lead to more mastectomies and more complex
cosmetic surgery after cancer treatment.
Surgeons light up cancer cells in attempt to cut relapses | Science | The Guardian
See it in action here:
http://bcove.me/8mmu92rb
Ovarian tumour cells tagged with a fluorescent
probe glow white (right), making it easier for
surgeons to remove them.
InshaAllah this will boost survival rates.