The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Breast Cancer The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Breast Cancer
Showing posts with label Breast Cancer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Breast Cancer. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Meet Bindi, The Cat Who Detected Breast Cancer In Her Owner


Bindi's story was one of the Most Incredible Story category finalists in the National Cat Awards sponsored by Verdo Cat Litter.

Bindi had always been a laid-back, gentle and sweet-natured cat, so when she started acting strangely one day, owner Valerie Lubbock knew something was wrong. Asleep on Valerie's lap, little Bindi, who was adopted from Crawley, Reigate & District Cats Protection, reached up, pushed her paws into her owner's chest and stared at her directly in her face.

It was so out of character it was the incentive Valerie needed to go for that check-up.

Within three weeks, Valerie had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had undergone a life-saving mastectomy.




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Monday, March 12, 2012

Cat Detects Owner's Breast Cancer Before Doctors, Saving Her Life



Call it a sixth sense, a special connection, or just plain mystery. But whatever gift cats and dogs have that allows them to detect health conditions in their owners sure has been saving a lot of lives.

Wendy Humphreys, a mother of two from Britain, found out first-hand how powerful that gift can be when her cat Fidge sniffed out a potentially fatal health condition that even doctors hadn't detected, the Daily Mail reports.

Bewildered at first, Humphreys was compelled to visit a physician after the 10-month-old cat began jumping on her breast and continued to do so for weeks on end.

What doctors found astounded Humphreys: She had a malignant tumor in her breast about the size of a pea that could have metastasized if it hadn't been discovered early. She is now scheduled to undergo chemotherapy and credits Fidge with saving her life, according to the paper.

Studies have shown that dogs, too, can pick up on illnesses and physical ailments by detecting acute changes in people's smell. In a 2011 study, researchers in Japan conducted trials to see how well a dog could identify people with colorectal cancer. The dog had a 98 percent accuracy rate, NPR reported.

Sometimes, however, animals' aptitude for detecting changes in humans defies scientific explanation. In 2006, a cat named Oscar confounded experts by "predicting" the deaths of a number of residents at a Rhode Island nursing home. Oscar would begin hanging around people days before they passed away, according to CBS News.

"Oscar is a normal cat with an extra-normal sense for death," Dr. Joan M. Teno, professor of community health at Brown and associate medical director of Home & Hospice Care of Rhode Island, told the Boston Globe. "As a scientist, I want to offer a biological explanation for this," she said. "But I can't."

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Do You Believe that Some Dogs Can Detect Certain Cancers?


We all know that there are drug sniffing dogs, and bomb sniffing dogs…but do you believe that there are dogs that can sniff out certain cancers?

The National Geographic News says, that ordinary household dogs with only a few weeks of basic "puppy training" learned to accurately distinguish between breath samples of lung- and breast-cancer patients and thy subjects. Please read their story, Dogs Smell Cancer in Patients' Breath, Study Shows.

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) says, that some dogs may be able to detect colon cancer.

A recent report in the medical journal Gut suggests that dogs may be able to help doctors detect colon cancer. Researchers in Fukuoka, Japan, found that one Labrador Retriever was able to sniff out the disease with 99 percent specificity, reports MedPageToday.com.

The canine was able to detect the cancer after smelling stool from patients who had been diagnosed with the disease. The animal was able to pick out the cancerous samples, even when placed side-by-side with healthy fecal matter.

"The study represents the first step towards the development of an early detection system using odor materials from patients with colorectal cancer" the researchers wrote in their report.

Though this latest development may be good news for cancer researchers, the scientists warned that it will take time to train dogs to smell out the disease, and that all breeds of canine may not be able to detect the cancer.

According to the news source, dogs have already shown the potential to smell out melanoma as well as ovarian, breast, lung and bladder cancer.



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