Machine to speed breast cancer diagnosis

A new machine that will speed up the diagnosis process for women with early breast cancer is being trialled in Brisbane in a world-first study.

The Princess Alexandra Hospital bought a semi-automated tissue microarrayer with the help of a $94,000 grant from the Golden Casket Foundation.
The machine allows doctors to quickly determine if women with early stage breast cancers need to proceed directly to having their lymph nodes removed, saving them from two invasive procedures.

The treatment will affect about 700 of the 2,220 women diagnosed with breast cancer in Queensland each year and spare them from having an additional operation that would have meant at least four extra days in hospital.

The machine is also expected to deliver savings of more than $2 million to the hospital and 3,000 bed days a year.

Princess Alexandra pathology department director Dr Glenn Francis said the machine enabled high-throughput screening of a large number of tissues, increasing accuracy of diagnosis by decreasing the risk of human error.

"The manual tissue microarrayers involve a lot of repetitive steps to receive a result," he said.

"By using the semi-automated microarrayer, 150 tumours will be able to be assessed on each slide."

Dr Francis said the arrayer would eventually be used for all cancer types, including prostate cancer, lymphoma and head and neck cancer.

The machine will be trialled at Princess Alexandra Hospital before being rolled out across Australia within three to five years.

Queensland Acting Premier Anna Bligh said the machine delivered significant benefits to the state's public health system.

"If we can save those operations and procedures and save time in hospital, then we can also save ... bed time in our hospital system," she said.

The Golden Casket Foundation has provided more than $2 million in funds for health and medical research in Queensland.

The foundation is funded by the interest earned on unclaimed first division lottery prizes, including a yet-to-be claimed $23.2 million Powerball prize from 2004.