Question: how much faster would it probably be to diagnose cancer in general?

Sarah Thomas answered on 25 Mar 2011:

At the moment, it takes 4 weeks to get biopsy results. A biopsy is when the doctor takes a small sample of your tumour for testing under a microscope to see if it looks cancerous. But, as a patient, your tumour would have had to grow large enough for you to notice it and tell your doctor about it. It can take years for a tumour to get to that sort of size! And what if it is a tumour deep inside your body, you might not be able to see it or feel that it is there. This is the great problem with cancer. Often it is not spotted until it is too late!

If there was a blood test that could help doctors diagnose patients in minutes, this would make a huge difference! It is a very simple test that anyone could get so you could in theory have it every time you visited the doctor, just to be on the safe side!