A team of researchers led by R. Ehmann at Ambulante Pneumologie (Stuttgart, Germany) have published an article in the current issue of the European Respiratory Journal reporting on a study in which trained dogs detected lung cancer with sensitivity of 90% and specificity of 72% [1]. Their well-designed study involved 60 lung cancer patients and 110 healthy controls, and is novel for also including “disease controls”; 50 patients with non-malignant lung disease. The findings of EHMANN et al. [1] corroborate the results of an earlier study of canine scent detection of lung cancer, which reported sensitivity and specificity of 99%. Together, these two papers, which achieved high accuracy while using different dogs, trainers and human subjects, beg the question of where this might all be leading. The purpose of this article is to review the evidence for canine scent detection of human cancers, and focus on how these papers may help advance knowledge in the field of lung cancer. There are very few published data on canine scent detection of cancers in general, or lung cancer in particular, and they vary widely in accuracy achieved and disease studied. However, the high accuracy of canine scent detection of lung cancer suggests dogs might, in the future, make some modest contribution to successes in lung cancer screening and detection.
CURRENT METHODS FOR LUNG CANCER DETECTION FACE MANY CHALLENGES
The goal of accurate, safe and noninvasive methods to detect lung cancer in its early and curable stages is shared by patients, researchers and clinicians worldwide. However, lung cancer is all too often diagnosed at late stages. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths across the European Union, both in terms of standardised mortality rates and absolute numbers of people dying [2]. In 2010, an estimated 220,000 new cases of …
