Many women who have breast cancer can halve their time in hospital due to a brand new technique. The UK based treatment is radical. About 20,000 women per year can benefit due to the new biopsy and return home in half the time.
Presently, doctors remove all the nodes within the patient's armpit to reduce the chance of reccurence of breast cancer. Yet the doctors do not know whether or not the nodes are infected until after they have removed them. This necessitates unnecessary surgery for 75% of women who discover the cancer has not spread.
Presently, 75% of women have lymph nodes taken out unnecessarily.
The new biopsy would mean that only the lead or "sentinel" node is taken out.
The benefits include women being out of hospital in two days as opposed to five as well as the underarm pain being drastically reduced, 60%-70%.
