He created a scalpel that can identify cancerous tumors.

British scientists have just announced that they have successfully created a smart surgical knife that can quickly identify within seconds whether the tumor being cut is cancerous or not.

This invention is expected to ensure accuracy and efficiency for future surgeries to remove cancerous tumors.

iKnife scalpel. (Source: euronews.com)

Scientists at Imperial College London, UK, said the device combines an electronic scalpel that can cut tissue with an electric current and a mass-spectrometer that can analyze chemicals from the cut tissue.

Called the iKnife, the device is considered a major step forward in identifying cancerous tissue during surgery.

With only about 3 seconds to give accurate results, it will help doctors make decisions right on the operating table.

Currently, to know if tissue is cancerous, doctors must send the removed tissue to a lab for analysis.

The above method is very expensive and takes up to 20-30 minutes to produce results, during which time the patient is placed in a state of total coma. In addition, the possibility of missing cancerous tissue is very high because no matter how experienced the surgeon is, he cannot clearly distinguish between diseased and healthy tissue.

According to statistics, about 1/5 of breast cancer patients have to undergo a second surgery after having had a tumor removed.

iKnife was used to identify cancerous tissue from 91 patients with 100% accuracy.

Scientist Zoltan Takats, the inventor of the device, said he would test the knife on about 1,000-1,500 different cancer patients for 2-3 years before asking for permission to use it widely on the market. Currently, the trial version of the iKnife is worth about 300,000 USD./.

According to (TTXVN) - VT