Thousands of bowel cancer patients will be saved from chemotherapy each year thanks to a revolutionary blood test that detects if they have been cured.
Nine out of ten patients with early-stage bowel cancer undergo surgery to remove the tumor, and one in four then undergo chemotherapy to make sure all the cancer cells are killed. Until now, doctors had no way of knowing if surgery had eliminated all cancer, meaning that thousands of patients would end up with unnecessary chemotherapy as a precaution.
Now, scientists have developed a test that looks for small pieces of DNA from intestinal cancer tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream. Patients who test negative for tumor DNA may avoid further treatment and its side effects.
It is expected that the