Description: test that doesn't focus on the pancreas itself may be the first safe means of accurately spotting early pancreatic cancer in people at high risk for the lethal illness, researchers say.

The screening requires a routine endoscopic biopsy of the duodenum, the upper part of the small intestine. When an early-stage pancreatic cancer is present, cells in the duodenum give off different light-scattering effects than if the disease is not there, U.S. researchers explain in the Aug. 1 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.

In the small pilot study of 51 patients, the optical screen was 100 percent effective in spotting patients with surgically removable pancreatic tumors.

"This is potentially a way of prescreening [high-risk] patients," said lead researcher Vadim Backman, a professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, in Evanston, Ill.

He explained that patients with a family history of pancreatic cancer now "liv