Lung cancer is cancer that take the most lives in Norway. In 2014 stood lung cancer for the scarce 20 percent of all cancer deaths in Norway. Eight out of ten lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, according to the Cancer Registry.
A new breath gauge to detect early stages of lung cancer. The breath gauge will be tested at 15 British hospitals.
Owlstone Medical has developed a new microchip sensor technology that can measure volatile organic compounds, VOC, when patients exhale.
This type of technology is already used as part of efforts to diagnose several diseases, but it is expensive and complicated to use, the news agency Reuters.
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The size of a button
According to the CEO of Owlstone Medical, Billy Bowle, their breath meter smaller and easier to use than the machines that are in use today.
– Chemical analysis work has historically made very large space and cost more than half a million dollars. We have developed a new microchip sensor technology. That means we have made a breath gauge the size of a button, says Bowle said.
Bowle tells Reuters that the sensor was originally developed to detect explosives and toxic gases. It has been reprogrammed to detect chemical markers of disease.
Initially, the new breath meter tested as a diagnostic tool for lung cancer, but it is planned several clinical trials.
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Hard to cure
Lung cancer is a very serious form of cancer, which often has spread to other organs or lymph nodes at time of diagnosis. This makes the disease very difficult to treat. According to the World Health Organization dies 1.5 million people from lung cancer worldwide each year. Only ten percent of patients diagnosed with the disease live more than five years.
Chemical markers for the disease, according to Bowle be possible to detect at a very early stage of the disease, even before the formation of tumors . This makes the disease easier to cure.
It has taken over ten years and more than $ 28 million to develop the new microchip sensor technology.
Doctor Robert Rintoul at Papworth hospital in Cambridge is involved in testing the new breath meter. He believes breath meter can be an important tool in the diagnosis of lung cancer.
– Do you have lung cancer, it produces cancer a variety of chemicals. The amounts are very small. About breath meter can detect the tiniest of volatile compounds, we can assume that the patient has lung cancer and investigate this further, says Rintoul told Reuters.
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