New Glasses Help Surgeons 'See' Cancer

So there's Google Glasses and ones you can wear at night that are really sunglasses but that cut out the glare. But how about glasses that allow doctors to see cancer cells?

"Viewed through the glasses, cancer cells appear to glow blue under a special light, thanks to a fluorescent marker injected in the tumor that attaches only to cancerous and not to healthy cells. Also, the lighter the shade of blue, the more concentrated the cancer cells are," Medical News Today reports.

Surgeons currently have to remove not just cancerous tissue but the tissue surrounding a tumor, as well.  

Samples of the tissue are then sent to the lab to be examined under a microscope, and if cancer cells are found, the patient often has to have a second operation to remove more tissue, which is then also sent to the lab.

According to one doctor, about 20-25% of breast cancer patients who undergo lumpectomy need to come back for a second operation.

British researchers described in 2012 how one fifth of women with breast cancer who choose breast conserving surgery instead of mastectomy eventually need another operation because the first operation fails to remove all of the tumor.

I was fortunate -- my cancerous tissue was removed along with neighboring areas, or "margins," which were found to be cancer-free so I didn't require additional surgery for that bout. But if these glasses had been around nine years ago, they might have caught another area of abnormal cells that was just beginning to grow, necessitating further -- and far more major surgery -- two years later.  

Maybe if women go along with the bombshell advice yesterday that they no longer undergo mammograms, these glasses will save them from cancer instead.