In this country, more than 150,000 lives are lost each year to lung cancer. One reason is that lung cancer is difficult to detect in the early stages, but some researchers are hoping to change that, using a new technology.
Imagine taking a breath test to see if you have lung cancer. That's what some researchers are working on in the hopes of saving lives in the future.
The problem is that none of the newest screening tests, including CT scans, have conclusively proven that they reduce the death rate from lung cancer.
Nearly four years ago, dogs, trained for the hearing impaired, showed they could detect bladder cancer by smell. Now scientists in Illinois and Ohio are trying to duplicate that feat in lung cancer patients, with a machine.
"We are moving forward with trying to learn more about what chemicals are present in the breath that make them unique in lung cancer patients," Dr. Peter Mazzone, of the Cleveland Clinic, said.
Researcher used a color-coded breath detector with 143 people. Some had lung cancer, and others were healthy. Each dot changed color from elements in the breath that researchers associate with cancer.
"It was between 70 and 75 percent accurate at picking up lung cancer," Dr. Mazzone said.
That's not good enough yet for real testing, but doctors predict smaller and more sensitive detectors eventually will have accuracy above 90 percent. It may be another five years to perfect the lung cancer breath test, but after that, they believe anything is possible.
"It opens the doors to potentially taking a patient and plugging them into this machine and diagnosing a wide range of disease states," said Matthew Placek, CEO of Chemsensing.
The next step? Researchers will test the lung cancer breath detector on 9,000 patients.
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