The knives surgeons use to cut generally vaporizes tumors, producing smoke. From there, surgeons send tissue to a lab and await results while the patient remains on the operating table for 30 minutes or longer.
According to the AP, however:
An experimental knife can now analyze the smoke and instantly signal if tissue is cancerous.
The knife was produced by Zoltan Takats of Imperial College London. It analyzes the smoke from cauterizing tissue, comparing it to “smoke signatures” from cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. Green indicates healthy tissue; red means cancerous and yellow means unidentifiable.
The knife and its machines cost more than $380,000 to produce but scientists claim the price would dip if the technology were commercialized.
The knife was tested at three hospitals between 2010 and 2012; tissue was taken from 302 patients, leading to a database of what kinds of smoke contained cancers including those of the brain, stomach, lung, breast, colon and liver. Tumors of 91 patients were then analyzed, and the new knife spotted cancer each time.
Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, told the AP that if the knife could definitively say whether doctors have removed all the cancerous tissue, “it would be very valuable."