You may buy pet insurance to protect your pet (and your wallet) from the costly expenses pet health can bring, but your pet may be able to save your life from breast cancer. Some early detectors of breast cancer say their dog is responsible for sniffing out the problem. The insinuation that dogs can smell breast cancer led to several research studies. Since dogs have been known to sniff out other health problems and other cancers in humans, detecting breast cancer is not that far-fetched.
In fact, the results of the studies show that dogs have a 99 percent accuracy rate in detecting lung cancer and breast cancer. With a sniffer that ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 times better than humans, what you can’t smell, your dog can.
The Study
To perform the breast cancer sniffing study, some dogs were borrowed from the organization, Guide Dogs for the Blind. The dogs were trained to sniff out breast cancer and lung cancer through a three-week training course. Human patients, 86 in total, were used in the study. The patients had been diagnosed with cancer, but had not yet started any kind of treatment. Mixed in with the cancer patients were 83 other humans who did not have cancer.
Each human was asked to breathe into a test tube, which was capped and then presented to the dog. The dog would not react to test tubes of the noncancerous patients, but would sit or lay down when sniffing test tubes of the cancer patients. As an added bonus, dogs seem to be able to sniff cancer at any stage—be it early or late. This means that dogs may be able to help in the early detection of breast cancer and other cancers so patients can obtain treatment and possibly save their lives.