Back in February, DOTmed News spoke to Dan Hashimshony, CEO of Dune Medical Services, about the MarginProbe; an innovative cancer cell detector that has been shown effective in lumpectomy cases and recently received FDA approval.

In the interest of understanding what the MarginProbe is like in a clinical setting, we had a conversation with Dr. Sheldon M. Feldman, chief of Breast Surgery Division at NY Presbyterian, Columbia University’s Medical Center. He used the MarginProbe while it was in clinical testing, and is currently exploring new ways it could be used today to better conserve breast tissue after cancer treatment.

DOTmed News: How long have you been using the MarginProbe and can you describe how it has improved outcomes for your patients?

Ad Statistics

Times Displayed: 109945
Times Visited: 6642

We repair MRI Coils, RF amplifiers, Gradient Amplifiers and Injectors.

MIT labs, experts in Multi-Vendor component level repair of: MRI Coils, RF amplifiers, Gradient Amplifiers Contrast Media Injectors. System repairs, sub-assembly repairs, component level repairs, refurbish/calibrate. info@mitlabsusa.com/+1 (305) 470-8013

Sheldon M. Feldman: We were part of a multi-center trial that was conducted in 2009 which was looking at potentially validating the MarginProbe as being effective in reducing re-excision rates for patients undergoing breast conservation surgery — specifically lumpectomy for breast cancer.

One of the big issues with breast cancer in patients who are eligible for lumpectomy, or conservative surgery, has been that a fair number of patients would need second operations because, despite our best efforts as surgeons, we would find that although the margins seem good during surgery, the final pathology would show that the margins were not clean enough. That leads to second surgeries, and the rate at which that was happening could be as high as fifty percent at some facilities, which is pretty unacceptable.

Centers with lower re-excision rates, if you looked at the cosmetics, would create clean margins but the appearance of the breast would be significantly changed. Having a more precise tool was of interest to me, so we participated in this trial in 2009 and put 60 patients in the trial. An analysis of the entire study showed a significantly reduced rate of re-excision for the group where the probe was used versus the group where it wasn’t.

What was striking to me was that our own cohort, and we’re in the process of publishing this now because we hadn’t actually looked at the data for a while, of the 30 patients who had the device, only one had reoperation, so that was a three percent re-excision rate — which is phenomenal compared to the rates most centers have had. In our group that did not have the device, the re-excision rate was 25 or 30 percent, which is dramatically different.

More Voices