cyst removal surgery had been unnecessary for 45% of those patients who had gone under the knife.
At the media conference, study team member Dr. Marco Dal Molin pointed out that standard screening tools were only able to identify about 20% of those patients whose cysts posed no cancer risk.
By comparison, the algorithm correctly pinpointed 60% of no-surgery-needed cases, said Dal Molin, who is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Kimmel Cancer Center.
But he also stressed that the new computer test is not intended to replace standard screening tools. Instead, the hope is that CompCyst can be deployed alongside current imaging and genetic tests “to integrate all of these aspects together.”
Still, the team acknowledged that more research is needed, including another