New technology in Jacksonville is being used to find lung cancer earlier than ever.
Memorial Hospital just did their first robot-assisted bronchoscopy Tuesday, the same day Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center doctors gave demonstrations of the same robot they just got.
Lung cancer kills more people than any other cancer. These new tools could help change that and mean less time spent worrying if you have cancer.
Dr. Aakash Modi, director of the Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center interventional pulmonology program, wants to make it clear the robot is not doing all the work; he is. The controller may look like it's for an Xbox, but this is not something you'd probably want to play with.
"When you ask a patient, 'would they like to be cured or maintained?' every patient is going to say 'cured,'" said Modi.
The robot technology will save lives and get patients answers faster because they won't be waiting longer for a biopsy with more complications. In a biopsy without this technology, doctors lose vision for part of the time. The CDC reports biopsies can cause infections, bleeding, and collapsed lungs.
"Some of them would like a procedure that has lower complications," Modi said about his patients. "This avenue and technology can provide that."
Seventy-five percent of people diagnosed with lung cancer die, which is 150,000 people every year, reports the CDC. Early detection of cancer is key.
Modi has seven patients lined up starting Wednesday to get this procedure.