Lung cancer diagnosis by trained dogs.

Objectives: Early lung cancer (LC) diagnosis is key to improve prognosis. We explored here the diagnostic performance of a trained dog to discriminate exhaled gas samples obtained from patients with and patients without LC and healthy controls.

Methods: After appropriate training, we exposed the dog (a 3-year-old cross-breed between a Labrador Retriever and a Pitbull) to 390 samples of exhaled gas collected from 113 individuals (85 patients with LC and 28 controls, which included 11 patients without LC and 17 healthy individuals) for a total of 785 times.