New Light Shines on Breast Cancer BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - Scientists have developed a new high-speed technique to determine if breast cancer has spread by looking at how light is scattered by cancerous tissue, a cancer researcher said Wednesday. Instead of patients waiting for tissue to be examined following surgery, an "optical biopsy" would determine almost immediately if it contained cancerous cells, Andrew Lee of University College London (UCL) said in an interview. "The potential application for our system is that it will detect cancer at the time of the initial surgery, so that it saves the patient the necessity of coming back for a second operation and the anxiety of waiting a few days for the analysis," Lee explained. The optical biopsy would detect the spread of cancer to the lymph nodes as well as any residual cancer in the breast that had not been removed during surgery, said Lee, one of the developers of the new technique. He was speaking at the 3rd European Breast Cancer Conference, a five-day event attended by 4,000 scientists, doctors and patient advocates. [03/20/2002; Reuters News Service] Remember we are NOT Doctors and have NO medical training. This site is like an Encylopedia - there are many pages, many links on many topics. Support our work with any size DONATION - see left side of any page - for how to donate. You can help raise awareness of CAM.