Medical advancements keep getting better and better! Now they can test your blood for cancer.
Woot! I saw on the news today that Dr. Dao and United Airlines came to a settlement agreement! Good for him! Hopefully he got millions, and now United Airlines and other airline carriers won’t be treating us like poop anymore.
Then I went to the health news section to scope out something nice to write about. And there it is – a cancer recurrence blood test! I feel like medicine is advancing so awesomely lately. I feel a definite hope for the future.
The Blood Test That Can Help Detect Cancer Recurrence, but Not New Cancers
Well the sad part is, this new blood test only works for people who already had cancer and won. But even if you won your battle over cancer, the chance of recurrence is real if you had a dangerous type of cancer. For some cancers, like breast cancers, the chance of recurrence can be as low as below 1 percent. But if you’ve had lung cancer, you’re 50 percent likely to have your cancer come back.
And that’s why these scientists tried to come up with a way to keep cancer patients’ victories going strong. It’s disheartening to get over something as serious as lung cancer and then die from it years later because doctors couldn’t catch the recurrence early.
So they came up with this blood test. It’s actually pretty neat and uncomplex. They take a sample from tumors from the previous cancer (whether through biopsy or surgical removal of the whole tumor), and then make up a genetic profile of the cancer cells’ genetic information. Then after you’re in remission, they just draw your blood and test it for the presence of the genetic profile!
It’s like what CSI does. They find a criminal’s DNA from evidence, then run matches. I guess cancer cells are criminals to your body, so the analogy fits!
It’s an awesome test because all you need to do is get your blood drawn every month while you’re in remission. Just a needle prick, that’s it. The blood test has impressively been able to detect the presence of a 0.3 cubic millimeter tumor before a CT scan or X-ray can. In fact, it can detect cancer recurrence 12 months before any current cancer diagnostic.
But the downside is it only works on people who’ve had cancer. It would be nice if you could detect cancer with the blood test that comes with your yearly physical – but no dice, right now.
Still, it works wonders for people in remission. I would imagine they’re feeling safer with their monthly blood tests. It’s also better than getting an X-ray, which exposes your genetics to radiation that could cause cancer. So not only is it better, but it’s safer too. Science has given us another victory!
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