Niamh Shackleton
A cancer that's often mistaken for heartburn could be diagnosed with a simple sponge test.
Cancer symptoms are often mistaken for other illnesses; for example, one woman with an extremely rare type of cancer initially dismissed her symptoms as a UTI.
However, it turned out that she had desmoplastic small round cell tumor (DSRCT).
And, sadly, this is the case with many cancers – oesophageal cancer in particular.
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According to Mayo Clinic, some symptoms of this type of cancer include difficulty swallowing, chest pain, coughing or hoarseness, weight loss without trying, and worsening indigestion or heartburn.
While oesophageal cancer is rare in comparison to others, heartburn affects up to one in four adults in the UK at any one time, says Guts UK, meaning it's easy for people to dismiss the potentially fatal illness for something less sinister.
As heartburn is very common, there have been calls to have people who experience it frequently to undergo screening for oesophageal cancer which can be done with a straight forward sponge test.
The capsule sponge test involves patients swallowing a dissolvable pill on a string, which releases a sponge the size of a 50p coin to collect cells from the oesophagus as it is retrieved.
It picks up abnormalities that form as part of a condition known as Barrett’s oesophagus, which makes a person more likely to develop oesophageal cancer.
It is hoped that using the test to screen for the disease could save lives and reduce the need for 'labour-intensive' endoscopy – a camera down the throat – which is currently the 'gold standard' to diagnose and treat this type of cancer.
Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald, director of the Early Cancer Institute at the University of Cambridge, invented the sponge test, and Mimi McCord from Heartburn Cancer UK wants the testing to become more widely available.
It's thought to only be available to high-risk patients in the UK.
Mimi set up the charity after losing her husband to oesophageal cancer in 2002.
With the cancer symptoms being like heartburn, she said that the illness can 'hide in plain sight'.
"Cancer of the oesophagus is a killer that can hide in plain sight," she told Metro. "People don’t always realise it, but not all heartburn is harmless.
"While they keep on treating the symptoms, the underlying cause might be killing them."
Mimi added: "We have a test. We know it works. People are dying while we wait to make it widely available."
The innovative test, also known as the Cytosponge test, was cleared by the FDA for use in the US back in 2018.
While approved by the FDA, the test is still yet to be widely used in America compared to traditional endoscopy.