As it turned out, the mole was cancerous, and the fact that the dog had aroused her suspicions may have saved the woman s life. According to Dr. Armand Cognetta, a dermatologist with the Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center in Florida, the patient s experience was much more than dumb luck. Cognetta advised that George was more than 99 per cent accurate in finding tiny cancer samples wrapped in gauze and placed in one of ten holes of a plastic tube. Cognetta also claimed that George reached nearly 100 per cent accuracy in finding melanoma samples taped under bandages on a trainer s body, and correctly detected melanoma in four of seven volunteer patients with cancer. Probably not, according to Jim Johnston.
Dogs are at their best when they can move around a lot.
There s a practical problem with putting a dog in a medical environment and then if they detect something, you still have to do a biopsy. It s the harder way. The easy way is to develop instrumentation. Johnston still recommends having it the spot, not the dog looked at. All rights reserved.