CHICAGO: A chemical test that can pinpoint the site of many hidden cancers in the body was described here at the 50th annual clinical congress of the American College of Surgeons. The senior surgical resident of Memorial Hospital in New York City, Dr Myron Arien, reported the new test. It may, he said, enable surgeons to operate immediately for cancer instead of having to wait, as they often do now, until they are certain of the location of the growth.

Medical men have long sought (and a number of scientists have believed too soon that they had achieved) a universal chemical test for cancer. Such a test would utilise analysis of a single drop of blood, for example, to disclose the presence of cancer and locate it in a particular body site.

Dr Arien’s test is not the long-sought universal one, but it is a step in that direction Moreover, it can be applied now in a substantial proportion of cancer cases.

The test depends upon the identification in specimens of tissues from lymph nodes of enzymes characteristic of particular organs. If the enzyme is present in the lymph tissue, this means that cancer is present in the organ that produces that particular enzyme. — News Service

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2014