By Kwabia Owusu-Mensah
Kumasi March 29, GNA – Peace and Love hospital, a specialist breast cancer health facility, in its quest to strengthen leadership in the fight against breast cancer in Ghana, has unveiled a ground breaking technology to aid in the early detection of breast and other cancers.
The GEN-1 Coreview Instrument, which uses the Flourecence Imitating Brightfield Imaging (FIBI) technology, allows the medical team to deliver a tissue-based diagnosis to a patient within 10 minutes after a biopsy procedure, while the patient is still in the procedure room.
The instrument, was developed after a two-year collaborative research led by Professor Eric Seibel of the University of Washington, Seattle, Professor Richard Levenson, of University of California Davis and Dr. Mrs. Beatrice Wiafe Addai, of Peace and Love hospital.
The technology designed to aid in the personalized early detection of breast cancer at the bedside has the potential to revolutionalise breast cancer care, offering accurate, timely and innovative state of the art diagnosis directly at the bedside, thus, providing immense value to patients, healthcare professionals and communities worldwide.
Peace and Love hospital is the first medical institution in the world to receive this pioneering technology outside of the inventors’ laboratories.
Dr. Mark Edward Fauver, a Biomedical engineer at the University of Washington, demonstrating how the machine works, said the FIBI instrument provided real time results for immediate surgical guidance, rapid reflex testing and improved patient care.
He said the instrument could detect cancer images within 5-10 minutes after biopsy was taken.
Dr. Lawrence Edusei, a pathologist at Pathologists Without Borders, said previously it took longer days or weeks to get biopsy reports for surgeons to make decisions.
However, there had been remarkable improvement in pathology practice in Ghana.
He said the Pathologists Without Borders was set up to bring pathological services to the excellent heights one could think about.
The aim is to help produce timely biopsy reports for patients.
Dr. Edusei pointed out that, cancers spread faster and it was important to provide biopsy reports timely for surgeons to make informed decisions.
The FIBI instrument was, therefore, a huge jump to bring pathological services instantaneously to patients.
Dr. Edusei said the next step moving forward was to provide personalised treatment for breast cancer patients in the country.
Dr. Mrs. Beatrice Wiafe Addai, Chief Executive Officer of Peace and Love Hospital, pointed out that, myth and misconception had contributed immensely to the inability of many people to report breast cancer early to health facilities.
She said the newest technology would help shorten the time it took to get specimen for patient care.
She said the instrument would also help in community outreach programmes to help in early detection of the disease in the communities.
GNA
KOM/CA