Of the quarter-million women diagnosed with breast cancer every year in the United States, about 180,000 undergo surgery to remove the cancerous tissue while preserving as much healthy breast tissue as possible.
However, there’s no accurate method to tell during surgery whether all of the cancerous tissue has been successfully removed. The gold-standard analysis takes a day or more, much too long for a surgeon to wait before wrapping up an operation. As a result, about a quarter of women who undergo lumpectomies receive word later that they will need a second surgery because a portion of the tumor was left behind.
