Depending on the extent of the cancer, the upper or lower lymph nodes can then be taken out to prevent the disease recurring or spreading elsewhere, he added.

The NHS has previously been slow to multi strand necklace roll out the tests because of the £60,000 cost to individual trusts of installing the screening machines and practical changes needed to run the tests, which cost £200 per patient.

But the NHS Technology Adoption Centre said that it would issue health trusts with guidance next year on how to introduce the checks.

Professor Ian Cree, head of the cancer laboratory that performs the tests in Portsmouth, added: “This is something that should become the gold standard of care, and cultured pearl I think it’s something patients should be asking for. We hope that it will be in widespread use very shortly.”

Hospitals in Sunderland, Morecambe Bay, North Staffordshire and Essex are understood to be in the process of acquiring the technology.

Emma Pennery, clinical director at the charity Breast Cancer Care, said: “We know that women can feel extremely anxious when waiting for biopsy results that could determine whether other treatments or further surgery are needed, so anything that wholesale pearl necklace can remove this anxiety would be welcomed.

The Department of Health said it would monitor developments: “We are always interested to know about new and innovative treatments.”

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in Britain, with about 46,000 women receiving a diagnosis every year. Most patients require surgery to wholesale coral jewelry remove a tumour or a whole breast, but they will also undergo checks to find if the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. About one patient in three will have a cancer that has spread in this way — particularly those with larger, “high-grade tumours” — but existing ultrasound or biopsy checks have the potential to miss 10 to 15 per cent of cases.

More than 750 patients in England have so far received lymph node assay: 160 at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford, using a Japanese technique, One Stop Nucleic Acid Amplification (OSNA), and 500 at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, using the rival Genesearch system distributed by an American company.

Both versions of the test rely on an existing procedure known as a sentinel lymph node biopsy, a selective but accurate method where tissue is surgically removed and sent to a pathology laboratory for tests. While samples are assessed under a microscope, and gemstone jewelry can take weeks to process, the new assay uses molecular biological techniques to break down and replicate the node tissue in a special solution.

This can then be screened for one or two types of messenger RNA — a key genetic signalling chemical — that can indicate the presence of so-called “micrometastases”, tumours smaller than 0.2mm in size.

Professor Graham Layer, breast surgeon at the Royal Surrey, whose team started using the technique in 2007, said that the speed of the results allowed surgeons to remove any lymph nodes affected by cancer while the patient was under general anaesthetic.

Of the patients so far treated, up to loose pearls 40 per cent tested positive for some spread of cancer, with results that were obtained in 30 to 45 minutes, he said. “We can see cases where cancer has spread that we could not have spotted with conventional ultrasound or biopsy tests,” he said. “For those women with a positive result, we are able to deal with that much more quickly than if we had waited for the results of routine pathology tests following a traditional breast cancer operation.”

A new “one-step” test allows breast cancer patients to be treated directly if their disease has spread, meaning that they no longer have to inflatable slides wait weeks for test results to come back or undergo a second operation.

Surgeons say that thousands of women undergoing surgery could benefit from the rapid diagnostic test, known as the breast lymph node assay. It is already being used at hospitals in Surrey and Portsmouth, and is due to be recommended for implementation across the NHS next year.

Quicker and more reliable than existing checks, it involves analysing the glands under the arms, to check if the cancer has already spread, at the pearl strands same time as a patient has a mastectomy or surgery to remove an initial tumour.

Patients currently have to wait two to three weeks after an operation for the results of laboratory tests on these lymph nodes, and may then face further surgery if their cancer has spread.
Related Links

But with the new assay, surgeons can obtain results in a matter of minutes, allowing them to treat the patient during the same operation.

Surgeons say that it could improve outcomes for women with freshwater pearl necklace breast cancer by eliminating the need for repeat operations and enable them to start chemotherapy earlier. It could also save the NHS money, by potentially avoiding 3,000 secondary surgeries each year.

During the call, Mr Collett appealed to wholesale pearl jewelry the pirates to release the couple: “My sister and her husband are blameless tourists and if you release them it would show your compassionate nature and it would be positive to everyone. Thank you.”

The Foreign Office has assigned a team to help with kidnap negotiations, composed of “a range of experts”, a spokesman said. Gordon Brown has called for the couple’s release.

The Somali Prime Minister, Omar Sharmarke, is also involved in negotiations, although his transitional government exercises no power over the pirate areas. Mr Sharmarke said: “We are trying to explain that this couple can offer no commercial reward and that their boat is all they have. We are asking them to make a gesture of goodwill and to release Paul and Rachel Chandler. I must reiterate that we are doing what we can for all the hostages and all the freswhater pearl necklace hostage situations must be resolved peacefully.

“The pirates do not have any history of harming their hostages and we are determined that this, at least, will not change.”

In the past two years Somali pirates have hijacked more than 100 ships in the region, mainly cargo vessels with insurers ultimately willing to pay ransoms. Millions of dollars have been paid this year, including $3.5 million for a Ukrainian ship laden with Russian tanks and $3 million for the supertanker Sirius Star.

Recently, however, pirates have increased their range — the Lynn Rival was captured hundreds of miles from the Somali coast — and seized more vulnerable targets such as private yachts.

In April an attempt by French forces to rescue a tin cup necklace couple and their young child on board a captured yacht ended with commandos shooting dead the boy’s father as well as two pirates. Somali pirates are thought to hold about 200 crew and nine ships.

In a ransom call to the BBC, a Somali pirate said: “They have been captured by our brothers who patrol the coast. We have been informed about their presence in the area, where bandits operate. If they do not harm us, we will not harm them, we only need a little amount of $7 million dollars.” Challenged on the size of the sum, the pirate replied: “Nato operations have had a lot of inflatable castles negative impact here — they have destroyed a lot of equipment belonging to the poor local fishermen. They arrest fishermen and destroy their equipment, in defiance of our local administrations.

“They illegally transfer the fishermen to their own prisons, and prisons of other foreign countries, so when you consider the damage and all the people affected, we say the amount is not big.”

Mr Chandler, 59, a quantity surveyor, and his wife, 55, an opera or rope necklace economist, took early retirement three years ago to devote themselves to sailing their 38ft yacht, the Lynn Rival.

On Thursday, October 22 they set off from the Seychelles, heading towards Tanzania and are thought to have been taken by pirates the next day. Nato and EU task forces confirmed on Thursday that the Lynn Rival had been abandoned off Somalia.

Mr and Mrs Chandler are thought to been held on a hijacked container ship, the Kota Wajar, then in the pirate haven of Haradhere. A pirate identified only as Abdinor said yesterday that the Chandlers would be moved back to a ship with other hostages.

Speaking to her brother, Stephen Collett, yesterday, Mrs Chandler had said that she was not able to say where the couple were now being held. She said that she and akoya pearl necklace her husband were safe and their captors “very hospitable” people. “Physically, we’re fine,” she said.