Training of examination dogs

Images of dogs appearing at airports help detect explosives and drugs is very common but in the future this animal may appear in both hospitals.

Training of examination dogs

According to British medical journal BMJ, experimental studies were conducted at St Lucas Andreas Hospital and VU University Medical Center, Netherlands. After 2 months of training, a beagle (rabbit hunting dog with a very good sense of smell) can detect the existence of Clostridium difficile bacteria accurately for 25/30 infected patients. This type of bacteria causes severe diarrhea and colitis in humans.

Researcher Marjie Bomers and colleagues discovered the idea of ​​a dog - a doctor when they heard a nurse talking about the characteristic smell of C. difficile diarrhea. In an interview with Time magazine, Ms. Bomers said: 'We thought that if the nose could detect the smell of C. difficile relatively accurately, dogs with great sense of smell could do well. get that '.

In Time magazine's statistics, in the United States alone, the number of patients infected with C. difficile is about 14,000 annually. Infected patients often have long-term care in the hospital and most of them become weaker or suppressed the immune system.

There are many methods that are used to detect bacteria but are often expensive and time consuming. Ms. Bomers hopes that dogs can help detect patients with C. difficile infection quickly to help prevent the disease.