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Updated: Dec 20, 2025

Drug-Induced Sleep Endoscopy DISE with Target Controlled Infusion TCI and Bispectral Analysis in Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Published on: December 6, 2016
A detection dog for obstructive sleep apnea: could it work in diagnostics?
Jenni Vaarno1, Jyri Myller2, Adel Bachour3
1Department of Otorhinolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Helsinki University Hospital and University of Helsinki, PO Box 263, HUS, 00029, Helsinki, Finland.
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.
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