In field training procedure
lung cancer, human lung cancer
LUNG CANCER
As for phase 2, the present study is the first evaluating trained sniffer dogs as point-of-care test for SARS-CoV-2 in one of the types of public facility most prone to overload, the community pharmacies. Since late 2020, in Italy, the demand for COVID-19 testing has quickly transformed the pharmacies in points-of-care. Approximately 70% of the 20.000 pharmacies across Italy were offering swabs at the time of our study, performing hundreds of swabs per day, especially amid variant surges. Their involvement indeed caused a 80% increase in the country administration of swabsThere was a difference between the duration of training of dogs in laboratory settings and the time needed to train the other five dogs in field. This was shorter compared to the duration of laboratory training for Nala and Otto, which can be explained by a different individual attitude of the dogs and by the fact that working in a laboratory setting, on samples contained in stainless steel supports, requires a longer time for learning than working in conditions that are way more natural to the dogs, namely outdoors, in public places to which they are already used, in a task that consists in sniffing out people. For Helix, the duration of lab training was shorter compared to Nala and Otto, which can be explained by taking into account that, as we explained in the methods section, she was already engaged in bio-detection work with human lung cancer. That work was carried out in the same lab, with the same scientists: therefore, her training did not require time to get used to the environment, but only to the new smell and to the sample supports, that in this study were aluminium tracks positioned on the ground, while in the lung cancer study they were 60-cm high aluminium stands.The Sp reached by our five dogs in the field (94%) was disappointingly lower than the 97% threshold set by the WHO for validation of antigen tests. Although such value could still be acceptable for screening