Your Breath Temperature Might Be Enough To Detect Lung Cancer

[Archean]

Your Breath Temperature Might Be Enough To Detect Lung Cancer

Detecting lung cancer can now be as simple as exhaling into a specially-designed thermometer, which is good news, since it's dastardly difficult to detect.

A research paper presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Munich suggests that a simple, non-invasive breath test could be enough to detect the deadly disease.

Here's how the researchers went about the experiment: 82 people, who had been referred for a full diagnostic test after an X-Ray suggested the presence of lung cancer, were asked to breathe into a breath thermometer known as an X-Halo device. (Ex-hale…get it?)

Almost half of them received a positive diagnosis, while the other half came up negative. When the researchers measured the breath temperature of the patients who tested positive, they found it higher than those who didn't. The temperature was higher if the cancer had progressed. It was also higher in long-term smokers.

 

[cliffordcooley]

So now the concept of breathing hot air as being the cause of cancer, not actually the cigarette.

 

[Archean]

Not really, they concluded that it is higher for both, I.e. in cancer patients as well as in long term smokers.

 

[cliffordcooley]

The inclusion of long term smokers were also within those that tested positive. That leads me to believe long-term smoking is an insignificant variable, no matter how much we want to point a finger at cigarettes. Especially when they seem to be independent of others with high cancer progression. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying smoking is safe. I'm just saying it may not be the leading cause. And if smoking has any effect on breathing temperatures, I don't see how smoking would not obscure results.

 

[Archean]

It is one of the causes, but not the only cause, you are right on that part. Recently I had a chance to attend/speak at an OHS related national level conference, from the data which I looked at while preparations for it, and what I've learned at the event, I can be very certain that there are so many hazardous materials which enter our lives, and only when I is too late we learn about the consequences/ill effects it had on our bodies. Tragedy is, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy involved at the governmental levels, simply to protect 'various interest groups+ corporate entities'.