A detection dog for obstructive sleep apnea: could it work in diagnostics?

3Citations
Citations of this article
14Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

This article is free to access.

Abstract

Purpose: We have previously demonstrated that dogs can be trained to distinguish the urine of patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) from that of healthy controls based on olfaction. Encouraged by these promising results, we wanted to investigate if a detection dog could work as a screening tool for OSA. The objective of this study was to prospectively assess the dogs’ ability to identify sleep apnea in patients with OSA suspicion. Methods: Urine samples were collected from 50 patients suspected of having OSA. The urine sample was classified as positive for OSA when the patient had a respiratory event index of 5/h or more. The accuracy of two trained dogs in identifying OSA was tested in a prospective blinded setting. Results: Both of the dogs correctly detected approximately half of the positive and negative samples. There were no statistically significant differences in the dogs’ ability to recognize more severe cases of OSA, as compared to milder cases. Conclusion: According to our study, dogs cannot be used to screen for OSA in clinical settings, most likely due to the heterogenic nature of OSA.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Vaarno, J., Myller, J., Bachour, A., Koskinen, H., Bäck, L., Klockars, T., & Koskinen, A. (2020). A detection dog for obstructive sleep apnea: could it work in diagnostics? Sleep and Breathing, 24(4), 1653–1656. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-020-02113-1

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free