Can dogs detect cancers?

A 75 years old person visited the doctor after being licked persistently by his dog at a lesion behind his ear. The man was diagnosed with malignant melanoma (a form of cancer) after laboratory tests in the hospital. This raises the question if dogs can be used in the future as a very handy tool in medical diagnosis of cancer. This dog was not trained to detect cancer though. Research studies show that tumorous cells have a characteristic signature smell. This signature odor is manifested in the patients sweat, urine,feces and breath. On the other hand, dogs have a very strong sense of smell. They can smell some substances at very low concentrations as low as parts per trillion!! This can lead to use of dogs in diagnosis of different types of cancers including prostate cancer, rectocolonic cancer, breast cancer and many more. They can sniff ovarian cancer from blood samples of a patient and prostate cancer from his urine and lung cancer from his breath. Such dogs are known as medical detection dogs. For more information on interesting topics like this, keep visiting our blog.

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