PTM wrote: Question for the medical scientists.
Post# of 148179
Quote:
Question for the medical scientists. Dr P shows levels of circulating cancer cells in the blood. He relates these levels to cancers in the body. Why aren't these type of blood tests used more generally to detect cancers before they advance to the point that they can be spotted on an x-ray or MIR when they are no longer as manageable?
The prevalence of CTCs will be different depending on the stage and type of cancer we are looking at. Unfortunately (for those looking for an easy early marker for cancer) CTC prevalence is low. There was a study of about 1500 breast cancer patients that showed that less than 10% of them had any CTCs at all.
So even if you have no CTCs in your blood it doesn't mean that you don't have cancer.