From the first moment my wife discovered
she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even
ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have
received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this blog…
Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast
cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites,
journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and
share them with you. Today:
In a shiny
laboratory straight east of the city of Amsterdam; over the English Channel
from London; over Pond, Gotham, and the Windy City from where I live; you will
find robots performing breast cancer surgery.
This robot, the
Stormram 4 (sounds like something from X-Men, doesn’t it?) can not only seek
out and destroy breast cancer cells – with withering heat or sub-arctic cold –
it does so INSIDE the MRI and under control of skilled microsurgeons.
Why is this such a
big deal?
Stormram 4 is made
entirely of PLASTIC! Not only that, it was made by a 3D PRINTER!
Significance?
First, metal
negates the power of an MRI – remember it stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging?
It creates an image of what’s in the body by magnetizing the metal in OUR
bodies. (“I don’t have any metal in me! I’m 100% organic!”) We ARE metallic,
actually – calcium in our bones is a metal on an atomic level, and of course,
iron is what makes up our blood. But it’s the WATER in our bodies that can be
magnetized. Again (not what you think of, but here it is) the hydrogen is
technically a metal and is magnetized by the super strong magnet of the MRI and
lined up so they’re all North-South aligned. Then the magnetic field shuts off
and the water molecules go back to normal. That’s what the MRI reads to build a
picture of your guts.
Anyway, MORE metal
in the picture (so to speak) screws everything up.
Stormram 4 is
plastic – including the needle. A surgeon can first take a biopsy to verify the
cancer; and rather than by a shaky human hand, the robot moves steady and rock
solid. Once the cancer is identified: “Through the use of special needles, the
tip of which can be very hot (thermal ablation) or very cold (cryoablation), it
is possible to destroy tumor cells close to the tip of the needle. This enables
the treatment of cancer without the need for invasive surgical procedures.”
While the
procedure is only being used in the Netherlands at this time and is
experimental – and requires the use of an extremely expensive and
hard-to-come-by MRI (while I live in a major city and MRI machines are
practically on every street corner, the actual machine is rare. Here’s a chart that
shows the number of MRI machines in developed countries…not that there are NO developing
countries listed: https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri-units.htm
So for now, countries like Nigeria, Liberia, and Cameroon (to name a few) will
have NO access to this new technology and treatment…) – it is clearly a new
step forward and another tool in the treatment of breast cancer!
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