Surgeons may have a new way to smoke out cancer. An experimental surgical knife can help surgeons make sure they have removed all the cancerous tissue, doctors repor ted on Wednesday. Surgeons typically use knives that heat tissue as they
cut, producing a sharp-smelling smoke.
The new knife analyzes the smoke and can instantly signal whether the tissue is cancerous or healthy.
Dr. Zoltan Takats of Imperial College London suspected the smoke produced during cancer surgery might contain some important cancer clues. So he designed a "smart" knife hooked up to a refrigerator-sized mass spectrometry device on wheels that analyzes the smoke from cauterizing tissue.
The smoke picked up by the smart knife is compared to a library of smoke "signatures" from cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. Information appears on a monitor: green means the tissue is healthy, red means cancerous and yellow means unidentifi able.
Currently, surgeons send samples to a laboratory to make sure they have removed the tumor while the patient remains on the operating table. It can take about 30 minutes to get an answer in the best hospitals, but even then doctors cannot be entirely sure, so they often remove more tissue than they think is strictly necessary. If some cancerous cells remain, patients may need to have more surgery or undergo chemotherapy or radiation treatment.
The new knife and its accompanying machines were made for about £250,000($380,000), but scientists said the price tag would likely drop if the technology is commercialized.
最終更新：2016年06月22日 01:19
