Cancer Smelling Dogs

UK researchers have found success in dogs’ ability to detect bladder cancer by smelling urine. In recent testing, six dogs of different breeds were trained for 7 months to discriminate between urine from bladder cancer patients and urine from cancer-free patients. While the dogs’ success was not perfect, it was 41 percent successful versus 14 percent as expected by chance alone. In one case, a subject was consistently identified as positive for bladder cancer by the dogs, even though cystoscopy and ultrasound results were negative.