BUFFALO, N.Y. — A new tool at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Centert could catch lung cancer much earlier.
It's called the Monarch Bronchoscopy Platform.
It's a minimally invasive robotic tool that lets doctors look inside someone's lungs in real-time and see lesions they wouldn't be able to otherwise.
“Peripheral nodules located in the outer section of the lungs are common — they’re found in up to a third of adults who get a chest X-ray or CT scan,” notes Sai Yendamuri, MD, FACS, Chair of Thoracic Surgery and Professor of Oncology at Roswell Park. “The vast majority of these concerning lesions — 96% — are not cancerous and don’t require treatment, but which ones? Earlier technologies did not allow us to effectively reach the lung periphery and determine the nature of the nodule as this new tool can.”
They can diagnose and biopsy lesions in a way they have never been able to before, and separate the four-percent that are cancerous from the 96-percent that are not.
"To be able to identify early, very early stage lung cancers, or to be able to rule those out in patients that might have a little something on a chest xray or ct scan, and to be able to identify that it's not lung cancer, is just really magnificent," says Shirley Johnson, of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Roswell Park is the first hospital in New York to get this system and is thanks in part to fundraising events like the Ride for Roswell.
