Ohio man says new cancer tech helped save his life

Mike Minshall was devastated when he was told he had two months to live.

“The tears well up in your eyes. I was standing there with my wife and my son and almost break down completely,” said the 74-year-old Plain City, Ohio, man.

Now - more than a year later -his prognosis is much brighter due to a critical second opinion.

Doctors used digital pathology on Minshall. It is new technology touted as a faster, more accurate cancer test.

“It has revolutionized cancer diagnostics. This technology gives me the tools to answer the questions in a way that simply wasn’t possible five years ago,” said Dr. Arnil Parwani with Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center in Columbus.

For decades, tumor cells were placed on glass slides for examination under a microscope.

Sending them out for review by specialists could take days or even weeks.

“With digital pathology you take those same glass slides and you digitize them and create millions of pixels- converting them into a large image,” said Dr. Parwani.

These digital images are easier to store, share, and access- plus a diagnosis can be done in an hour- not weeks.

They also allow doctors to more accurately stage and grade certain cancers.

Minshall said the technology helped save his life. He is now cancer-free.

“Thank god my son and daughter-in-law were pushing me and my wife to go and get this other opinion,” said Minshall.