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New technique for visualizing ovarian cancer during surgery
Ovarian cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in women, after breast cancer. Up to 80.000 women are diagnosed annually with ovarian cancer in the United States.
This type of cancer is very hard to detect because the symptoms are very common (frequent urination, difficulty eating) and can be easily confounded with other diseases. Also, it is very hard to operate on this type of cancer because surgeons attempt to remove the entire tumor and in order to do this, they have to rely more on their visual insight and palpation, because there is no technique that can offer them a more detailed view of the affected cells.
But, a group of researchers from Munich may have discovered a way to help surgeons during operation see in more detail the parts of the tissues affected by cancer.
The study was conducted through nine patients that had ovarian cancer. Before the surgery they have been given through an injection, fluorescent dye combined with folic acid.
Ovarian tumors have a protein on the surface that connects with the folic acid and takes it inside the cell. During the surgery, the doctor uses a special laser light upon the ovaries of the patient which leads to the cells affected with cancer emit light. This is due to the folic acid which by the operation time is inside the cancerous cells.
Unfortunately, the eye of the surgeon cannot see the light emitted by the affected cells, so in the operating room have been installed three cameras which detect the fluorescent images at different spectral bands and show on the screen as accurately as possible the affected tissue.
In eight cases out of the nine studied, surgeons have been able to remove the affected tissues and detect the parts of cells that might have missed otherwise.
The researchers plan on perfecting this technique and adapt it to offer as accurate fluorescent information as possible and extend this test for other types of tumors in order to perfect this technique and improve the prospects for patients suffering from this disease.
