Doctors have told health services to prepare for a new era of cancer screening after a study found a simple blood test could spot multiple cancer types.
More than 6,600 adults over the age of 50 were offered the blood test as part of the study. Almost all of the forms that were not routinely screened for were at an early stage of the disease.
It is the first time that the results of the Galleri test have been returned to patients and their doctors to guide cancer investigations.
The results of a major trial involving 165,000 people will be reported by the National Health Service. The technology is still in development and doctors hope the test will save lives by detecting cancer early enough for surgery and treatment to be more effective.
Dr Deb Schrag, a senior researcher on the study at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, told the European Society for Medical that she was excited about the new paradigm and concept.
More than 6,000 people over the age of 50 were offered the blood test. The test was negative for 6,529 people.
Solid tumours or blood cancer were confirmed in 35 people. A woman had two different types of cancer.
Doctors can quickly locate and confirm a cancer with the help of the test. Schrag said that the signal of origin was very helpful. It took under three months to complete the work-ups after a positive blood test.
The test identified 19 solid tumours in tissues such as the breast, lung and colon, but it also spotted ovarian and Pancreatic cancer, which are typically detected at a late stage and have poor survival rates.
There were some cases of blood cancer. Fourteen of the 36 cancers were early stage and 26 were forms of the disease that aren't routinely screened for.
The blood test was negative for almost all of the people who were cancer-free. A majority of the people who had a positive test had cancer.
Schrag said the test wasn't ready for population-wide screening and that people need to continue with standard cancer screening. This still suggests a glimpse of what the future may hold with a very different approach to cancer screening.
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The director of research at Gustave Roussy cancer centre said that they will need more doctors, surgeons and nurses within the next five years.
According to Naser Turabi, the director of evidence and implementation at Cancer Research UK, blood tests for multiple types of cancer are showing promise for patients.
Making progress against late-stage cancers is dependent on research like this. The trial results give us a better idea of how often cancer is found in people who haven't been previously diagnosed.
We need data from larger studies to fully assess this test and other similar tests in development to understand whether people actually survive for longer after their cancer is picked up.
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