A cutting-edge robot-assisted bronchoscope can reach very small tumors growing in the lung's deepest recesses, clinical trial results presented at a European Respiratory Society meeting in Amsterdam suggest.
The device uses a specialized CT scanner to find tumors buried deep in hard-to-reach places of the lung, researchers said.
A robot helps guide the bronchoscope to those deep places, allowing doctors to take a biopsy and confirm whether tissue is cancerous, researchers said.
"The technology allows specialists to access nearly any region of the lung, meaning that we can offer biopsy to more patients and diagnose cancers earlier when treatment is more likely to be effective," lead researcher Dr. Carolin Steinack, a senior attending pulmonologist at University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland, said in a news release.
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