By Peter Smith
There is a general interest and worry cancer as it is responsible for the death of 1 out of 4 people in America. Certainly there are many different angles for a science publication to cover. However for our first article on the topic we decided to explore the diagnosis of cancer, because you can’t treat or cure a disease if you can’t find it.
One way to diagnose Cancer is through biopsies (obtaining tissue or bone marrow from a patient). We were invited to the UCLA Santa Monica Hospital to be shown through the diagnosis process by a Pathologist. Dr. Hart, the pathologist who led us on the tour, is in charge of determining if a patient has cancer by looking at their cells. The process according to Dr. Hart is quite simple. First a surgeon will remove tissue from a patients body which is called a biopsy. The tissue will then be taken to a Pathology lab where they will be encased in wax called paraffin. Then it will be cut with a blade which edge is 2 microns in width. The slice of tissue and paraffin is immediately transferred to a slide and stained. Then it’s up to Dr. Hart with help from a powerful microscope to decide whether any of the cells are cancerous. It definitely takes a trained eye to find cancer cells and other things under the microscope, as we discovered on our tour. However this method of diagnosis is by far the most prevalent.
There is a general interest and worry cancer as it is responsible for the death of 1 out of 4 people in America. Certainly there are many different angles for a science publication to cover. However for our first article on the topic we decided to explore the diagnosis of cancer, because you can’t treat or cure a disease if you can’t find it.
First a surgeon will remove tissue from a patients body which is called a biopsy. The tissue will then be taken to a Pathology lab where they will be encased in wax called paraffin. Then it will be cut with a blade which edge is 2 microns in width. The slice of tissue and paraffin is immediately transferred to a slide and stained. Then it’s up to Dr. Hart with help from a powerful microscope to decide whether any of the cells are cancerous. It definitely takes a trained eye to find cancer cells and other things under the microscope, as we discovered on our tour. However this method of diagnosis is by far the most prevalent.
Cancerous Cells photo-Itayaba