Imagine if you are diagnosed with cancer, but the results of the biopsy confused with someone else. This bad scenario occurs in about 3,000 women who underwent biopsy every year.
Research shows that one in a hundred cases having errors. Either that, false positives, or false negatives. The error is certainly a significant impact, either psychologically or therapy given.
According Dr.Andrew Kenler, of Yale Medical School, approximately 6,000 patients annually excessive untreated or treated for the disease due to an inaccurate diagnosis.
Kenler explained, a biopsy (tissue sampling) is a complex process because sometimes must pass through stages 15-20. Because of this complexity, one specimen of the label or potentially contaminated.
"Laboratory pathology can check 40-50 cases of breast cancer every day and they use a container that may be mixed. So there is the possibility of cell or tissue from another patient mix," he said.
Fortunately, this time the scientists have developed a simple method to prevent diagnostic errors, ie, with DNA testing.
"We prevent the error by using a tool called Know Error system, where each result is accompanied by a biopsy of the patient's cheek swab sample. Swab is basically like a DNA fingerprint of each patient," he said.
With this method, each patient biopsy can be compared with DNA samples to ensure the results are 100 percent accurate. The test is not only simple, but also easy and inexpensive.