According to a German study, a dog may find the presence of tumor in the lungs by smelling the breath of patients. Researchers have long discovered that dogs can smell ill patients with several types of tumors, but this was the first study that proves their ability to locate the presence of tumors.
This is a major step in the fight lung tumor. Researchers discover that there are certain elements that indicate the presence of this type of tumor and the study on dogs confirmed this.
Researchers at the German Hospital Schillerhoehe, worked with trained dogs on over 220 volunteers. The group included healthy patients and others with lung carcinoma. Dogs were able to discover 71 with accuracy from 100 that had the disase .They also managed to discover 372 healthy from 400.
Interesting was the fact that the dogs were able to discover tumor in the presence of other factors, such as tobacco use. Current tests to detect lung tumors still fails to do so.
Other researchers have worked on computers capable of doing the same diagnosis, without using dogs. But sometimes dogs are better than technology in the detection of these diseases.
