Researchers studied a two-year-old beagle trained to identify the smell of C. difficile. The dog was also tested with 100 stool samples, 50 with C. diff and 50 without. To test the dog’s detection of C. diff in patients, the trainer guided the dog along the wards of two large Dutch teaching hospitals in 30 detection rounds, each consisting of one patient with C. diff and nine control patients. The dog was trained to sit or lie down when detecting the infection.
Results showed that the dog’s sensitivity and specificity for identifying the infection in stools samples were 100 percent. In the detection rounds with patients, the dog correctly identified C. diff in 25 of the 30 cases, with sensitivity of 83 percent, and 265 of the 270 controls, with 98 percent sensitivity.
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