Innovative Glasses to Help Cancer Patients

Everyone who is wearing glasses every day, wears them as they are necessary for own health, in order to see the surrounding world better. But have you heard about eyeglasses aimed at "seeing” the health of the other people? Such glasses allow doctors see the malignant tumors in the patient’s body.

These innovative glasses were created at the WashingtonUniversitySchoolofMedicineand they posses capability of perceiving particular radiation of specific wave length emitted by preliminary injected fluorescent marker, which anchors to the cancer cells, ignoring the healthy ones. When using the latter glasses, cancer cells glow in blue color, which allows removing them easily from the body during the surgery.

The groundbreaking glasses are currently in the developmental stage; however Prof JulieMargenthaler of the WashingtonUniversitySchoolofMedicinehas already started using the high-tech glasses in treatment of breast cancer.

The major advantage of the latter method is that during the primary surgery it becomes possible to remove the whole tumor and the metastasis (in certain cases), eliminating the necessity of repeating surgery which are often needed in such cases. In addition, the surgical view by means of such glasses allows performing the surgery and remove tumors less traumatic for healthy cells and tissues.

"The given technology has a very solid potential for both patients and doctors", said Prof. Achilefu. "Our major ambition ist to prove that cancer has been conquered and beaten."

Therefore, we can hope that thi newest function of glasses – improving others’ health – will soon become widely used in medicine, not only in terms of seeing the world better, but also for seeing our bodies from the inside.