Since its inception in 2013, the iKnife has become one of the favorite and most used smart scalpels by various health professionals, since it has the great ability to help detect some types of cancers, such as breast and cerebral.
But to its importance is added that, thanks to a publication by the British media, The Guardian, it was learned that the instrument is now capable of detecting endometrial cancers in patients in just a few seconds with an accuracy rate of almost 90 percent.
iKnife
This novel medical device was invented in 2013 by a group of researchers from Imperial College London, in the United Kingdom. About the size of a traditional toothbrush, it works by cleverly mixing electrosurgery with mass spectrometry, using electrical pulses to vaporize tissue, while a suite of spectrometers analyzes the resulting smoke for potential cancer cells.
In an article published by the research journal Cancers, it was detailed that “the iKnife reliably diagnosed endometrial cancer in seconds, with a diagnostic accuracy of 89 percent, minimizing current delays to [los pacientes] while awaiting a histopathological diagnosis.
The iKnife’s potential new ability to assess almost instantly could dramatically alleviate the stress that occurs. Research lead Sadaf Ghaem-Maghami explained that the iKnife could “immediately reassure” someone of an extremely low probability of cancer, while speeding up further testing and treatment for those with potentially positive biopsies.
The first investigations and experiments by the group of researchers, mostly British nationals, compared the iKnife results with traditional diagnostic methods for biopsy tissue samples from 150 people.