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Physicians at Orlando Health UF Health Cancer Center are fighting lung cancer with innovative technology to view the inside of the lungs and obtain tissue samples for biopsy.

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The Monarch™ Platform, manufactured by Auris Health, is the first FDA-cleared robot for diagnostic and therapeutic bronchoscopic procedures. Orlando Health is the first facility in Florida and among the first in the country to feature the technology. It uses a flexible robotic endoscope to enter the lungs through the mouth, allowing cancer specialists to diagnose small, hard-to-reach nodules located in the periphery of the lungs with greater precision than ever before.

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"Lung cancer often goes unnoticed in its early stages so there is an unmet need to diagnose this disease much earlier in our patients," says Mark Vollenweider, M.D., section chief for pulmonary medicine at Orlando Health UF Health Cancer Center. "With the Monarch™ Platform we have the ability to see and access parts of the lungs that were previously out of reach, speeding up diagnosis and potentially improving survival rates."

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More than 90 percent of patients diagnosed with lung cancer do not survive because the disease does not show symptoms early. According to the National Cancer Institute, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. More patients die every year from the disease than from prostate, breast, and colon cancers combined.

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The Monarch™ Platform utilizes a familiar controller-like interface that physicians use to navigate the flexible robotic endoscope to the periphery of the lung with improved reach, vision, and control. Combining traditional endoscopic views into the lung with computer-assisted navigation based on 3-D models of the patient's own lung anatomy, the Monarch Platform provides physicians with continuous bronchoscope vision throughout the entire procedure.