Is it possible to detect lung cancer by smelling someone’s breath? Sharina Kort, a lung specialist in training at MST, recently obtained a PhD from the University of Twente based on her research on this topic.
Since 2015, Sharina Kort has been researching the potential to diagnose lung cancer with breath analysis. In the research, an electronic nose is trained to distinguish between people with and without lung cancer.
Many people die of lung cancer. This is largely because it is only discovered at a late stage, when metastases are usually already present and there is little hope of recovery. This is why our research is so important; another reason is that it focuses on the non-invasive diagnosis of lung cancer. In other words, a test that carries no risk of complications and that the patient does not find unpleasant.”
Sharina Kort, lung specialist
The nose has been trained in four hospitals, among 376 people, to detect lung cancer in exhaled air. “Subsequently, we confirmed it in a new group of 199 people,” adds Sharina. “If the nose indicates no lung cancer, we can say with 94% certainty that the person does not have lung cancer.”
“Testing with an electronic nose could be a faster, cheaper and less unpleasant way to detect lung cancer than current testing methods. At the moment, biopsies are taken from the lung, for example,” continues Sharina. “With electronic nose tests, the results are obtained faster, so the patient waits in uncertainty for a shorter time.”
“The next step is to determine which stage of the trial process is the best time to use the e-nose to provide the greatest benefit to the patient,” says Sharina. “This needs to be the subject of further investigations.”