Human Health
Dogs’ Amazing Feats Extend to the Medical Field
The Sun Chronicle, September 29, 2009
It has been long known that dogs offer an array of physical, emotional and social benefits to people. Humankind’s best friend is now digging its way into medicine. When I think about the dog’s capacity to use its nose as a tool for diagnosing cancer, I cannot help but ask: Is there a dog-ter in the house?
Believe it or not, the first reported case of a dog detecting cancer in humans goes back to 1984 when a 44 year-old woman went to see her dermatologist because her Border Collie-Doberman mix kept sniffing and even tried to bite a mole off of her thigh. The skin growth turned out to be a malignant melanoma.
Since then, the idea that dogs could sniff out cancer has both intrigued and baffled the medical community. Scientists aren’t exactly sure exactly what causes the dog to be able to detect cancer, but they do know that dogs do not need to see a malignant lesion to respond to the presence of cancerous cells. This means that the dog’s sniffer can also be used to detect lung and breast cancer.
Trainers have teamed up with scientists to properly train dogs to specifically detect malignant cells. The first dog formally trained to do this was a Schnauzer named George. George was taught to identify in-vitro malignant melanoma by a dermatologist who was teamed up with a police dog trainer. To train for cancer identification, the pair used simple detection-dog training methods like those used to train search and rescue work.
Formal scientific studies have been conducted in recent years to test the dog’s success rate for detecting cancer in containers filled with urine samples. Several samples were placed on the floor and trained cancer detection dogs evaluated the samples. Not surprisingly, the dogs consistently identified the urine sample from the patient with bladder cancer.
Typically, cancer-sniffing dogs get very active and excited upon identifying malignancy. They may jump around or get over active. But this is not always the case. One of my fellow dog loving friends has a Boxer who has not had any formal melanoma detection training, yet he has identified cancer in people by refusing to move his nose once he finds a location of curiosity on the body. Talk about getting a pet-scan!
When I think about the various ways in which the dog is being used in the medicine, I am amazed. Seizure detection and glucose level detection dogs are just a few of the ways that dogs are already diplomats in the medical community. I look forward to the day when my yearly visit to the doctor’s office includes being inspected by a cold nose.
Wags, Tracie