There is a new tool to diagnose cancer tratment in Costa Rica. It is the first of its kind in Central America.
Thanks to the Chemosensitivity Tumor Laboratory, located at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Costa Rica (UCR), the country has a great advantage compared to the rest of the region.
The equipment, brought from different parts of the world, was an investment of half a million dollars and it will not only be used for study and research work: there are agreements with the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS) to use it in applied medicine.
The equipment works in the following way:
-A portion of the patient’s tumor is removed by surgery or biopsy.
-Substances (enzymes) are applied to that portion. It will help each cell to separate.
-They will settle in one of the machines.
-Divided cells are placed in “wells” where a different chemotherapy medicine is applied to each of them.
-Doctors wait 7 days to study the effects.
-Doctors check if the cells died, if they multiplied, among others.