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Science – Health
Today, 80 to 85% of all lung cancers detected in Belgium are at an advanced stage, mainly because, at the beginning of the disease, the symptoms are little or not present. And so, it is mostly late (sometimes too much) that patients will consult. By allowing not only to diagnose this cancer at an earlier stage but also to treat it faster, the technological innovation that is now being offered to Erasmus Academic Hospital is bound to help increase patients' chances of survival.
How is the screening?
"One of the ways to improve the screening and therefore the prognosis of patients is to target at-risk populations, smokers for example and give them a CT scanner regularly, explains Professor Dimitri Leduc, Head of the Pulmonology Department at Erasmus Hospital
. This technique is proven but it is not precise enough. Indeed, a nodule identified by a scanner is not necessarily cancerous. A second badysis is therefore necessary to clarify its nature ".
This second badysis can be performed via a bronchoscopic endoscopy. "It involves taking a fragment of nodule to badyze it in the laboratory, says Leduc. But this technique is only really effective for nodules larger than 2 centimeters in diameter. For nodules of very small size, we have been using for some years what is called endobronchial electromagnetic navigation. And it is precisely the evolution of this technique that allows a clear improvement in the care of our patients. "
Diagnose and treat at the same time
So what exactly is the innovation in question? Until now, endobronchial electromagnetic navigation only allowed to make a diagnosis, explains the hospital in a statement. If the nodule was cancerous, it was necessary to return the patient to operate.
"Today, we can combine the two: in the course of the same procedure, we perform, as a first step, the sampling and badysis of the nodule fragment and, in a second step, its resection if it is actually cancer " explains the specialist. The benefits seem obvious: the care is earlier but also more comfortable for the patient.
Moreover, if the badysis does not allow a precise diagnosis to be made at the same time, this new technique also makes it possible to mark the suspicious nodule so that the surgeon can perform, by video-badisted surgery, the resection of a limited part of the lung. to do the immediate badysis and to reserve the complete resection, more disabling, only in case the cancer is confirmed.
"This combined technique allows for less invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures than conventional techniques in a single operation time, providing patients with faster recovery and recovery.", concludes Dimitri Leduc.
Funding for this new technology was made possible thanks to support from the Erasmus Fund for Medical Research.
L. D.
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