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Gastrointestinal surgery

Real-time tissue identification during surgery

A new 'intelligent knife' provides near-real-time intraoperative tissue analysis and enables accurate differentiation between malignant and benign tissue. This ability to 'smell' cancer could be applicable to a variety of oncological operations in gastroenterology, but some questions and limitations remain as this interesting new technology is explored.

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Correspondence to Conor P. Delaney.

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Crawshaw, B., Delaney, C. Real-time tissue identification during surgery. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 10, 624–625 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2013.176

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