Woman’s nervous stress and the necessity to endure a lengthy period of breast cancer biopsy results anticipation and overcome the uncertainty, related to it, can be relieved due to application of a newly-designed and minimally aggressive diagnostic instrument which is capable to define a malignant tumor presence or confirm the existence of an innocent tumor.

Lawrence Livermor at the National laboratory has developed a probe which can more precisely and carefully detect breast cancer than the tools traditionally used for these purpose. The methodology doesn’t require taking off samples on biopsy, i.e. no tissue is nipped off; at the same time, the reliability of malignant cells recognition can be compared with that of biopsy. The new probe is thinner than a needle of a typical syringe and is inserted in the suspected breast to test it. The probe seeks known breast cancer chemical indicators and immediately delivers the data to treating doctors which can use them to determine whether further, more aggressive and expensive, tests are required. Patents are promptly got acquainted with the test results and thus, get a relief.

In future, the number of biopsies, which sometimes lead to fatal consequences for even healthy patients, will be reduced. Breast cancer is the main death reason of American women. Last year, 182,800 women in the USA were diagnosed with breast cancer, and over 40,800 died from this horrible disease. In the USA, appr. 16,100 women are weekly subjected to needless surgery biopsies, if there is any suspicion they have a malignant tumor in breast. In addition, doctors during physical examinations and mammogram survey each week miss some 4,600 cases of actual breast oncologic disease. The sensors of the probe starts gathering information as soon as the probe is being inserted in the tissue. The device software compares current parameters with a set of known (preset) archival parameters and confirms the presence (or absence) of a tumor. The results are immediately displayed on a PC monitor.

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