Breath testing has the potential to dramatically improve the efficiency of screening for gastric cancers, according to a recent assessment of the approach. Such noninvasive testing would be useful for identifying patients likely to have gastric cancer, and for whom a confirmatory diagnostic upper gastrointestinal endoscopy is warranted.
“Breath analysis is a promising method for detecting gastric cancer, with good diagnostic performance and the potential to decrease the number needed to screen for endoscopy-based gastric cancer detection,” said Ghazal Haddad, MD, of the University of Toronto, who presented the research poster at the 2021 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (abstract 175).
Haddad and her colleagues aimed to evaluate the accuracy and applicability of breath analysis for detecting this cancer.