A recent study has revealed that conducting annual blood tests can significantly aid in the early detection of cancer and may help prevent nearly half of the patients from progressing to advanced stages of the disease.
Experts are currently investigating whether simple blood tests can identify cancer before any symptoms appear and whether this early detection could improve survival rates.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is currently experimenting with various screening tests, including the Galleri test and the miONCO-Dx test.
Published in the journal BMJ Open, the study suggests that annual or biennial cancer screening could not only detect the disease earlier but also prevent it from reaching stages where treatment becomes ineffective.
The research focused on fast-growing and aggressive tumors, which tend to remain in the early stages for a limited time—ranging from one to four years.
The study examined several types of cancers, including bladder, breast, cervical, bowel, kidney, liver, bile duct, lung, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate, skin, and blood cancers.
The analysis concluded that universal blood-based screening could prove more effective than traditional diagnostic methods in identifying cancer at an earlier, more treatable stage.
