Cancer surgery, there is always more than cut a circle in the periphery of cancer to ensure that all cancer cells are cut off, so as not to slip through the net after a relapse, therefore, cut down the organization, often half surgery, it is necessary to send Pathology test to see if there are no cancer cells at the tissue section, if any, which means that the range of cut is not big enough, there is cancerous tissue left in the body, cut into large circle again point to a go of this, the less you want to wait half an hour.
If you can cut the time to know the results, the more good can be much shorter surgery time, do not sit and surgical team, the patient recovered relatively quickly. Imperial College London, Sophie Dan Ta Kate (Zoltan Takats) physicians on trying to solve this problem, he put brains move to the electric knife on top.
Since the 1920s, electric knife is a good partner surgeons are using powered boil the organization, the benefits are heat sealed vessels will automatically stop bleeding, on the one hand to reduce blood loss, but it is also not so bloody what operative space could not see. Cautery, when, in fact, somewhat like in the "Barbecue", burning tissue Zizi sound, produce a lot of smoke, usually attached to the electric knife on the hood suction pipe cigarette sucked.
Ta Kate physician had an idea, thought can not take advantage of these cigarettes, cut to the organization to determine why it?
Ta Kate physician sucked the smoke suction, connected to a spectrometer, spectrometer analysis of the chemical composition of smoke, because different organizations will have different chemical metabolites, so you can see the difference in the spectrometer, in his view, Thus, not only may be able to cut to the organization that is malignant or normal, but also know that there are organizations which bacteria and other information.
So he got up from 302 surgical patients who cut down a variety of tissues, including brain, lung, breast, stomach, colon, liver, etc., have cancer, with normal tissue, are burning to take calls, then spectrometer analysis of the smoke burn out, he found that really different organizations spectral analysis are specific to establish a database later, as long as less than 3 seconds, you can know what to cut.
The next step is the actual test, the research team tested the 91 surgeries spectral analysis, results 91 results have been correct.
Ta Kate physicians believe that this new technology can greatly improve the efficiency of operations and results, the next step, the research team wanted to test is given with a smart scalpel surgeon immediately analyze information, can improve the performance of surgery? If so, perhaps surgery "run pathology" will become the past.
(Photo credit: Imperial College London)
