Lasers can now de­tect prob­lem spots on the in­testines of pa­tients with bow­el dis­eases, re­searchers say.

These de­vices could re­duce the need for pa­tients to un­der­go painful biop­sies that re­move tis­sue sam­ples from their in­testines, sci­en­tists added.

Near­ly 1.5 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease (IBD), a group of in­flam­ma­to­ry con­di­tions of the colon and small in­tes­tine. Treat­ing pa­tients who have these prob­lems costs about $1.2 bil­lion each year in the Unit­ed States, ac­cord­ing to the Crohn's & Col­i­tis Foun­da­tion of Amer­i­ca.

To help keep this con­di­tion in check, most pa­tients un­der­go colono­scopies on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, which can be ex­pen­sive. Each colonoscopy can in­volve sev­er­al painful biop­sies as doc­tors try and de­ter­mine whether tis­sue is in­deed ab­nor­mal.

"When you re­move tis­sue dur­ing a biop­sy, you have no clue whether the spot you are prob­ing is re­al­ly rel­e­vant for analy­sis, so you might have to go back and do it again," said re­searcher Dr Raz­van Ar­se­nes­cu, med­ical di­rec­tor of the In­flam­ma­to­ry Bow­el Dis­ease Clin­ic at Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty's Wexn­er Med­ical Cen­ter.

"I was frus­trat­ed many times hav­ing to do ran­dom biop­sies–it was like try­ing to find a nee­dle in a haystack."

Now a new laser tech­nique can make bow­el ex­ams far more ef­fec­tive.

"This tech­nique helps us avoid un­nec­es­sary pro­ce­dures that in­crease risk to the pa­tients, and re­al­ly gain an un­der­stand­ing of what's go­ing on in pa­tients in re­al time," Ar­se­nes­cu told Live­Science.

Pa­tients re­ceive in­jec­tions of a dye that quick­ly cir­cu­lates with­in their body. A tiny blue laser at the end of an en­do­scope–a cam­era at­tached to a ca­ble –is then pressed against the side of their in­testines.

"Nor­mal­ly, you can't see in­side tis­sues with en­doscopy," Ar­se­nes­cu said. "But the dye re­sponds to the laser, and al­lows us to take an im­age."

The laser shines in­to the tis­sue, to a depth of about 50 mi­crons, or half the av­er­age width of a hu­man hair.

"We can get an im­age that will al­low us to ob­serve in­di­vid­ual cells, struc­tures in the tis­sue and blood ves­sels," Ar­se­nes­cu said. "That's about 1,000 times bet­ter com­pared to what you can see with the naked eye."

With this probe, the re­searchers can then look at tens or hun­dreds of spots, iden­ti­fy spots that are ab­nor­mal, and then do biop­sies there.

"We're dis­cov­er­ing pre­can­cer­ous le­sions with this tech­nique that may have de­vel­oped in­to colon can­cer and would have been missed by ran­dom biop­sies," Ar­se­nes­cu said. "It's mak­ing a huge dif­fer­ence for pa­tients."

This laser tech­nique is not meant to re­place biop­sies, Ar­se­nes­cu cau­tioned.

"This is a method meant to be done along­side biop­sies, to help make them smarter," Ar­se­nes­cu said.

Cur­rent­ly, on­ly two dozen or so cen­tres use this tech­nique in the Unit­ed States, Ar­se­nes­cu es­ti­mat­ed. Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty's Wexn­er Med­ical Cen­ter is one of the first US hos­pi­tals us­ing this type of laser tech­nique to treat pa­tients with IBD–near­ly 100 pa­tients have re­ceived this treat­ment since Oc­to­ber.

Even­tu­al­ly, this laser tech­nique may be used to de­tect ab­nor­mal tis­sues in pa­tients with lung, blad­der or gy­nae­co­log­ic dis­eases.

"We're right at the be­gin­ning with this," Ar­se­nes­cu said. (Ya­hoo News)

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