TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A biomedical researcher from Faculty of Medicine at the University of Indonesia (UI) Achmad Hudoyo created a lung cancer early detection method by utilizing a rubber balloon.
He said that he was inspired by a research on the ability of dogs to detect the breath of a person with a lung cancer. Achmad said that trained dogs can detect if someone is suffering from a lung cancer only through their breath with the accuracy of 93 percent.
“This indicates that there is a certain substance inside the breath of a lung cancer patient,” said Achmad during the presentation of his thesis on Wednesday, January 10.
Read: Gene Activity in the Nose May Signal Lung Cancer
Achmad developed this early detection by trapping the breath of a suspected lung cancer patient which was blown into a balloon. This balloon is then frozen dry in the freezer to freeze the breath contained inside the balloon.
The next step is to blow the air out of the balloon into a filter paper so that it would capture the DNA. Then the sample would be sent to a biomolecular laboratory for further examination.
According to Achmad, this method is advantageous since it uses simple and cheap items that can easily be found across Indonesia. “This method is 70 percent accurate.”
He hopes that this method could improve the life expectancy of lung cancer patients in areas that do not have a proper healthcare service.
Moh Khory Alfarizi
