Diagnosing bladder cancer with urine odor

Researchers at the University of Liverpool and the University of West of England at Britol have created a device that can analyze urine odors to look for early signs of bladder cancer. The team said the device could achieve 100 percent accuracy with 98 urine samples.

The device, called the Odoreader, contains a sensor system that responds to chemical substances in the gas released from the urine. The system includes a standard gas chromatograph fitted with a capillary column. The capillaries communicate with a hot metal oxide sensor (a mixture of tin and zinc oxide) acting as a detector.

The vial containing the urine sample is put into the device and the gas from the urine inside is analyzed to get the result of the chemical found. This process takes about 30 minutes, the results will be displayed on a computer screen and the data will indicate whether or not the presence of cancerous cells in the bladder.

The team said early diagnosis of bladder cancer would increase the chances of successful treatment and reduce the cost of treatment. One of the methods used to detect early signs of bladder cancer is to use specially trained dogs to smell strange urine. However, this approach is not ideal for the hospital environment. However, based on the fact that dogs can detect cancer from strange odors, researchers have an important idea to create the device.

"The results from Odoreader are encouraging for us to develop new diagnostic tools for bladder cancer, but we now need to scale up with more samples. Test of more patients to test the performance of the device before it can be widely used in hospitals, " said Professor Chris Probert of the University of Liverpool.