Despite the abundance of methods for diagnosing stomach cancer, the search for new methods for determining the disease is not becoming less relevant. Modern scientific discoveries and the emergence of new technologies contribute to scientists in the search for these medical solutions.
One of the promising areas is the definition of diagnosis through tests for stomach cancer.
Define stomach cancer - tests
As we know, some of the methods for diagnosing stomach cancer sometimes involve a risk for the patient, and therefore I would like to receive a painless and accurate method of diagnostics in the treasury of the world practice.
One of the latest developments in this direction is the breath test.
Numerous observations and studies confirm the fact that the causative agent of stomach cancer is the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. This bacterium affects not only the chemical composition of the blood and internal tissues of the stomach, but also affects the exhaled air. This is the basis for a new test for stomach cancer, developed by Latvian and Israeli scientists, which during the initial tests showed a rather high accuracy - about 92%.
The device is equipped with a breathing tube, in which there are sensors that fix certain compounds released by the bacterium or formed during the development of the tumor. Based on the data obtained, the level of these harmful compounds is assessed, and a verdict is made about the presence of cancer. However, it is too early to talk about mass introduction of this method, the scientists intend to continue clinical trials and collect statistical material.
It is worth mentioning that since the 60s of the last century other methods have been tested for the diagnosis of stomach cancer. For example, a tetracycline test based on the fact that, for reasons unknown until now, cancer cells accumulate this compound. To determine the presence of tetracycline compounds, a fluorescent analysis of the gastric washings is carried out by injecting a special probe into the stomach and introducing a liquid into it, followed by a backward extraction.
There are also methods of diagnosing the disease based on the analysis of gastric juice, in particular, on the DNA of gastric juice. However, all these methods do not give high accuracy in the definition of cancer of the stomach, and therefore little used. However, these methods have stimulated the creation of other methods based on oncomarkers, but this will be discussed in the next article.