What Types Of Cancer Can A Dog Detect?

Dogs never cease to amaze us. These animals have more than proven themselves to be the best friend a man could have. In addition to serving as a companion, its proven ability to assist in aspects as varied as the detection of bombs, drugs and missing persons. And now, also cancer.

In the pedagogical field, they have proven to be excellent classroom assistants with young children. They have helped them with tasks such as improving reading. On a therapeutic level, his work with children with Down syndrome or autism is also outstanding.

Help against cancer

In the health field, properly trained, they have become the best alert for people with epilepsy or diabetes. And also as cancer detectors they are very effective.

There are several dogs that have helped their owners in the detection of cancer.

Undoubtedly, what has further enhanced the “medical legend” of dogs is their proven ability to detect the presence of various types of cancer in the human body.

 The first case was documented in the United Kingdom in the late 80s. A woman went to the doctor after insisting that her Borden Collie mixed with Doberman Pinscher had a mole that appeared on one of her legs. The spot, which had already been evaluated by a dermatologist and initially classified as benign, would end up as an early-stage melanoma. Had it not been discovered at that precise moment by the pet, it would have been life threatening.

 How do they do that

The answer to the question of how dogs can detect cancer and malignant tumors in people’s bodies lies in their nose. 300 million olfactory receptors are housed there.

Trained for this purpose, they can identify variations that are imperceptible to the human nose (which only has 5 million olfactory receptors). And they do it with a precision equivalent to a drop of blood in two Olympic swimming pools.

They even have the ability to detect the presence of the disease when it is in its “zero” stage. That is the time when none of the traditional methods is capable of doing it.

What they detect are Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC ). That is, small particles produced by evil bodies that spread throughout the body.

Types of cancer they can detect

• Prostate: the most common cancer in men, with 21.3% of all cases. It is detected by dogs through urine with an accuracy of between 93% and 95% . In the United Kingdom, the Medical Detection Dogs Foundation uses these animals to identify the “false positives” that the traditional test used to mislead this pathology tends to show.

• Ovaries: detected in its initial stage. E l survival rate for this cancer is 90%. The main difficulty is that more than 60% of cases are diagnosed when it is already very advanced and has spread. One of the factors that makes it difficult to identify it quickly is that all its symptoms are associated with other conditions, such as constipation or inflammation. However, through urine, dogs warn about the incipient formation of a tumor.
• Lungs: by sniffing the exhalations, the effectiveness rate of many of the dogs trained to “smell” lung cancer reaches 100%.
• Skin: we already mentioned that the first “official anecdote” regarding the ability in dogs to identify this terrible disease was with an insipient melanoma. In this case, the animals are trained to perceive the stench that is emitted directly by the body of each of the patients.

• Colon, kidney and intestines : with an efficiency that exceeds 98%. The presence of tumors in these three organs is detected by the breath of sick people or through their excrement.

There are also studies that support the efficiency of trained dogs to detect breast and bladder cancer.

Training

Breeds such as Labradors have a natural inclination to hunt and detect smells and are the most used. But specialists maintain that any dog ​​can be trained to detect the presence of the disease.

Depending on the affected organ, the aroma of the volatile particles that is generated is unique. That is why dogs receive specific training. In the same way that when they are trained in security tasks, positive reinforcement (rewards) is used to train these health agents.