Thursday, May 22, 2014

Cancer Detecting Dogs

Everyone knows that dogs have a keen sense of smell, but now they can even pick up on the worst of the worst...cancer!  We're finding that dogs are capable of detecting cancer even before your doctor does!  Cancers in the lungs and colon are being found by dogs at a highly accurate rate.  There are findings that dogs are over 90% accurate in detecting colon cancer through breath and stool samples alone.  Prostate cancer is being found in urine samples and even melanomas and ovarian cancers are being discovered...all using man's best friend and their strong sniffers.  It is believed that dogs are relying on that strong sense of smell to pick up on subtle chemical changes in the human body which show up in breath, urine and stool samples.  As with with most cancers, the earlier the detection the better the treatment and success rate.  Ovarian cancer in particular, the sooner it's found, the better the outcome....and it is starting to be found that dogs can find ovarian cancer even before modern medicine.  This method of cancer detection using dogs would certainly be more cost effective, quicker and easier at regular annual check ups.  Seems like a smart idea to get on board and support programs working with cancer sniffing dogs.

Sniff Sniff

4 comments:

  1. Sometimes we have to stop and think just how amazing dogs are. We heard of quite a few cases over here where owners were prompted to check out problems by their dogs behaviour to find out it was the evil C. Have a fabulous Friday.
    Best wishes Molly

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  2. Lady says they should use this more for testing, it would be a lot easier for people to just let a dog smell them then to have to have needles and other horrible things.
    Dogs rule!

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  3. It's pretty amazing what dogs can do.

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