Women currently rely on mammograms to detect possible cancer, but blood tests may be a better alternative in the future, and British health experts say it will revolutionize healthcare.
According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, a test that examines cancer cells in the blood can detect the disease in the early stages, which increases the effectiveness of treatment.
The accuracy of this test, which is called “Truth Check” in detecting cancer cells, is 92%, that is, it is about five points more accurate compared to the examination that is currently carried out by radiography.
Experts believe that mammography is not always successful in detecting breast cancer cells at a young age, especially among young women.
Dr. and breast cancer surgeon Kefah Mokbel, one of the participants in the medical project to develop the test, said that monitoring the cells through the blood makes a fundamental difference.
In the same vein, Tim Crook, a doctor and cancer researcher at a private clinic in London, says that blood tests may be an alternative to x-ray technology.
The doctor, who relies on blood tests to diagnose breast cancer in patients who come to the centre, noted that late detection of the malignancy is causing huge problems in the UK.
When this test is performed, the nurse takes a 5-millimeter blood sample, which is then analyzed for the presence of so-called metastatic tumor cells.
These cells are mostly produced by cancerous tumors and are often strong markers of disease.
In a pilot study that included samples from 9,632 healthy women along with 548 women with cancer, it was found that the blood test detected the disease with 92% accuracy.
The advantage of this examination is also in its ability to detect cancer in advanced stages of the disease, that is, when the tumors have spread to other parts of the body.
And the accuracy of this blood test among women who had reached the third and fourth stage of malignant disease reached 100%.
Source: Lebanon Debate
