Increasingly, technology to detect and treat various diseases are becoming more sophisticated, although coupled with the fact that the complicated tests were also quite expensive. But most of this new technology is not complex, easy to use and very affordable because it uses only the smell of human breath.

This technology was developed by a team of scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology and was first introduced on June 2, 2012 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. Although still awaiting the results of clinical trials, a technology called cancer-detecting breathalyzer system is capable of early detection for breast cancer and lung cancer.

The tool is also expected to drastically reduce the cost to cancer patients in the United States, but it allows the expansion of screening in countries with inadequate infrastructure and the technology is still taboo for a mammogram.

“Most people move towards a more complex technology and more expensive. I wanted something rugged but inexpensive and fairly easy to do,” said Charlene Bayer, a professor of chemical engineering at Georgia Tech and lead researcher of this project as reported by LiveScience.

Cancer breathalyzer works by first capturing a patient’s breath in a specially designed container. Once inside the container, the breath will stay fresh up to 1.5 months with storage in a refrigerator.

Container of breath is then sent to a laboratory where a chemical sensor will search for organic compounds emitted by the body of the infected cancer.

Because all the doctors just need to tell the patient to breathe into a container and then sent to the laboratory, the test is to radically reduce the cost, time and patient discomfort often associated with CAT scans and mammograms, the light of Bayer.

For patients in Western countries, the major problem of cancer screening is cost and inconvenience. This test can reduce the cost of breast cancer tests from 800 dollars to less than 100 dollars, said Bayer. In addition, this test will not cause physical discomfort.

For patients in developing countries or countries that have strict gender restrictions, this test could open more opportunities for cancer prevention. Not only lowers the cost of screening, but the doctors who operate in mountainous, remote areas or even a thick forest can still do this test.

In addition, many cultures that prohibit physical intimacy that is required to perform tests such as mammograms. With this breath test, a woman wearing a burqa can also undergo screening for breast cancer without having to break the culture.

This test does not have the same accuracy as other more expensive tests, not even really shift the pre-existing technology, the Bayer said. Conversely, Cancer breathalyzer will help determine whether the patient needs further testing with a device that is more expensive and intrusive it or not