We have heard that dogs can tell if a person is suffering from cancer simply by sniffing. There are some dog breeds who can give more accurate results than state-of-the-art medical equipment. This was first experimented with lung cancer patients.
People use their vision to interpret and understand the world. But for dogs, they depend on their sense of smell. Did you know the nose of the dog has millions of scent-detecting cells than human? Take a look at a postage stamp; this is similar to the size of our scent organ while dogs have almost the size of an A4 bond paper.
Lung Cancer
There are some studies in which dogs detected lung cancer simply by smelling the breath of the patient. Dogs were trained for a few weeks and they have learned to differentiate the breath of a person suffering from lung cancer and a healthy individual with a 99% accuracy rate. This procedure was also used with breast cancer. Researchers have trained their dogs to sit or lie down in front of test tubes that have the breath samples of cancer patients.
Breast Cancer
A story was told a dog can detect breast cancer. The pet dog kept on looking at the breast of her owner and plunged into her chest. The owner found out that she has a lump in her breast after consulting a specialist.
Colorectal Cancer
According to some research, a dog particularly a Labrador retriever can detect colorectal cancer 98% of the time simply by sniffing the breath and the stool specimens of the patients. The result is almost the same accuracy as a colonoscopy procedure.
Skin Cancer
There are also experiments made proving that dogs can detect melanoma cells and the experiments were made with bags of extracted melanoma cells. Also, dogs can detect skin cancer melanoma by sniffing the skin lesion. Dogs are amazingly smart in sniffing melanomas. In 1989, a story was reported that a pet dog would often sniff his owner’s mole. The dog’s breed is mixed Border Collie and a Doberman. Further, the pet ignores all other moles found in the owner’s body but not the mole on her thigh. One day, the owner wore shorts and her dog almost bit her mole. When the owner consulted a doctor for this particular mole, the lab test results showed that the mole is was a malignant melanoma.
Prostate Cancer
In addition, some studies have proven dogs can detect prostate cancer by sniffing the urine of the patient.
Although some research had proven the ability of dogs in sniffing cancer, it is also an important factor to consider if a dog sniffed cancer or it may simply be an inflammation.
Not all dogs’ sense of smell is equal. There are some studies showing Bloodhounds are the best sniffing dog because the dog has the most scent receptors among canines. Further, it is believed Bloodhounds have olfactory system that is 10,000,000 times sensitive than people. Moreover, the following list of dog breeds are considered the top ten best sense of smell.
1. Bloodhound
2. Basset Hound
3. Beagle
4. German Shepherd
5. Labrador Retriever
6. Belgian Malinois
7. English Springer Spaniel
8. Coonhound
9. German Shorthaired Pointer
10. Pointer
It is true dogs need intensive training to detect a cancer. The result of a dog’s sniffing is not 100% accurate which is why we cannot really say if dogs can be considered at the frontline of medical diagnosis. But their incredible ability is still being used as one of the methods in detecting cancer. In the future, scientist can make use of dogs’ talent in identifying the causes of cancer. This can help quicken the development of better diagnostic equipment and can save lives through early detection.
