New Device Capable of Reducing Second Breast Cancer Operations by Half

Breast cancer surgeries are often imprecise with parts of the tumor left in the body as much as 30 to 60 percent of the time in the United States, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine, which is why surgeons at the school’s medical center are making headlines by being the first to use a device capable of reducing the chances doctors will have to reoperate by as much as half.

The tool, called the MarginProbe, enables surgeons to immediately detect whether or not cancer cells remain in the margins of excised tissue via radio frequency signals transmitted into the tissue and reflected back to the console.

Currently, patients have to wait days for a pathologist to determine whether this is the case.

Since the goal of a lumpectomy is to completely remove the cancer while preserving as much normal breast tissue as possible, if a pathologist finds cancer cells on the edges of the tissue taken out, surgeons can assume the lumpectomy didn’t retrieve the entire tumor.

“All of my patients know someone who has had to go back into surgery because their doctor didn’t get the entire tumor out,” surgical oncologist Dr. Alice Police said in a press release. “The ability to check tissue in the operating room is a game changer in surgery for early-stage breast cancer.”

Police, along with Dr. Karen Lane, associate professor of surgery and clinical director of the UC Irvine Health Breast Health Center in Orange, Calif., began operating with MarginProbe in early March.

The decision to do so came after they participated in an FDA trial including more than 660 women across the United States in which surgeons used the device, shaving off additional tissue on the spot in the case the probe suggested it was not all removed. In all, the trial showed a decrease in need for repeat surgeries by 56 percent.

“It will save you a lot of anxiety,” Jane Madigan, a woman who underwent the procedure with Police under the trial. “You will come out of that surgery knowing you are cancer free.”