Pancreatic cancer detection: A simple breath test may spot tumours in seconds

New Delhi: Imagine going to your GP with vague stomach discomfort or unexplained fatigue, and instead of being put on a waiting list for scans, you’re asked to breathe into a small bag for half a minute. Within days, your doctor has an answer — and if it’s bad news, you catch it early enough to make a real difference. That kind of future may not be far off.

Researchers in London believe a 30-second breath test could transform one of the deadliest cancer diagnoses. Scientists at Imperial College have been developing a device that can detect pancreatic cancer with striking accuracy, even before symptoms properly set in. It’s currently being tested in the NHS with around 6,000 volunteers across 40 hospitals in England, Scotland, and Wales. If all goes according to plan, it could land in GP surgeries within the next five years.

Pancreatic cancer doesn’t attract the same attention as breast or lung cancer, but its statistics are brutal. Roughly 10,800 people in the UK are diagnosed each year. More than half will die within three months. It’s not that treatments don’t exist — the real battle is spotting the disease early enough to use them. The cancer is notoriously quiet in its first stages, often masquerading as indigestion, back pain, or tiredness. By the time symptoms ring alarm bells, the cancer has usually spread.

There is currently no simple early screening method. That’s why campaigners are calling this experimental breath test the most hopeful development in half a century. Pancreatic Cancer UK has described it as "tangible hope”, an unusual phrase in a field where optimism can be difficult to sustain.

So how does it work? When the body develops pancreatic cancer, it releases very specific volatile organic compounds — tiny chemical signals — into the bloodstream. Those compounds eventually exit through the lungs and can be detected on the breath. The Imperial team has shown that those chemical traces are present even when tumours are small and before classic symptoms emerge. Their early studies, involving more than 700 breath samples, suggest the idea holds up in real patients, not just in a lab.

The new trial is the big test — literally. Thousands of patients who have been referred under the NHS urgent suspected-cancer pathway will now help prove whether the technology works in everyday practice. If doctors can receive results within three days, as hoped, it could speed up referrals and save precious time for those who genuinely need urgent scans and treatment.

Professor George Hanna, who leads the work, says the ambition doesn’t stop at pancreatic cancer. If all goes well, the same approach might eventually distinguish between different digestive cancers using nothing more than exhaled breath. For now, the science still has boxes to tick, regulators to satisfy, and more analysis to complete. But the idea that something as ordinary as breathing could one day catch a silent killer — that’s a quiet revolution in the making.