Here are two welcome reports from Medical News Today:
Blood Test Predicts Detects Lung Cancer Years Before CT Scan
16 Jul 2006
A new blood test is able to correctly predict non-small-cell lung cancer in patients years before any CT scan can detect it, say researchers from the University of Kentucky, USA. The test identifies human immune response to tumors.
Non-small-cell lung cancer patients have a 40% chance of living for five years or more after diagnosis. 50% of patients die within the first year. It is the most common lung cancer.
If further studies confirm its reliability, this will become the first blood test to predict cancer since the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test.
You can read about this research in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.
Lung cancer kills more people around the world than any other cancer. 10 million new lung cancer diagnoses are made each year. Over three quarters of all lung-cancer patients are/were long-term regular smokers.
At the moment the most common way of diagnosing lung-cancer is with a CT Scan (computed tomography). However, CT scans are not completely accurate and patients often have to have a piece of the lump in their lung extracted for further tests - they have to have a biopsy. Biopsies for lung cancer can be painful. It is common for the biopsy test to find there was no cancer at all. . . .
You might also like
