Frankie the dog has an innate ability to sniff out thyroid cancer in undiagnosed individuals, according to U.S. researchers who presented their findings at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, saying that the animal had an “unbelievable” sense of smell which allowed it to detect the neck cancer in humans prior to diagnosis through traditional means.
The study, which was published in a release on the journal EurekAlert, quoted the study’s senior investigator and chief of endocrine oncology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), Dr. Donald Modenner, as having said that specially trained canines like Frankie could prove useful in modern medicine as an early detection system capable of reducing the number of “unwarranted” surgeries which come as the result of current diagnostic procedures which lead to “a large number of thyroid surgeries performed unnecessarily”.
Current diagnostic procedures for thyroid cancer often yield uncertain results, leading to recurrent medical procedures and a large number of thyroid surgeries performed unnecessarily […] Scent-trained canines could be used by physicians to detect the presence of thyroid cancer at an early stage and to avoid surgery when unwarranted
Thyroid tumors are relatively rare and usually diagnosed through blood tests in which scientists check the patient’s hormone levels. The samples are produced using a needle which extracts the cells in process known as a fine-needle biopsy.
BBC reported that Frankie had an 88 percent rate of success in tumor detection after checking 34 patients. To be more specific, the hound was able to accurately identify patients’ urine samples with a success rate of 88.2 percent, according to the researchers behind the study.
The team of researchers at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock indicated that the dog can detect thyroid cancer by sniffing the urine samples of patients.
In other health coverage here on Immortal News, the love hormone oxytocin has been administered as a synthetic nasal spray to men in a study and the preliminary research indicates that it may help men lose weight.
Would you trust a scent-trained canine like Frankie to determine whether or not you have thyroid cancer?
