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Saturday, February 20, 2010

Those noisy MRI scans may be replaced by blood tests soon

If you too have head/neck cancer, you know the MRI scans I am referring to - inside the noisy tube, listening to the magnets dance while the experts run the scan to see if you have a recurrence. I think at one point I was getting those about every 6 months (seems they found some interesting things to keep watching in my head, despite what my little brother used to tease me about when we were younger). Now, scientists say that watching for cancer may only take a blood test after the initial tumor's genetic signature has been identified. As reported in Reuters [http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61H5QR20100218], they used this new process to identify cancer remaining in colorectal cancer patients long before anything would have shown up on an imaging scan. They say the procedure is costly now (hey, I would pay 5 grand gladly to see if anything is floating around), but should be less than an MRI in the future. So far, they have only tested breast and colorectal cancer. I am not sure if Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma would be a good cancer for this test, since it travels the nerves more than in the blood, but we can hope. Now, where did I put that 2006 tumor...

1 comment:

Dee said...

A friend of mine sent me a similar article. I think this would be fantastic if it works. It seems that it would take less time and be more detailed. Thank you for posting it!

 
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