Introduction: The early determination of serious pathologies has so far been an important issue in both the medical and social fields. The search for an instrument able to detect cancers has led to the consideration of the usage of chemicals of the human body, which carry, through its volatile compounds, information coming from or related to defined pathologies.
Areas covered: The electronic nose (EN) seems to represent a good solution for the detection of cancers of different types. Recent results showed the utility of an EN to smell chemicals related to lung, melanoma, prostatic, breast and pancreatic cancers. The results obtainable from ENs are chemical images and, as it will be shown in this paper, the probability of cancer recognition is rather high. Main results obtained at international level and by the authors of this paper will be commented upon.
Expert opinion: A personal opinion is given trying to foresee future developments of the olfaction strategy. To this purpose, two main aspects are considered: looking for better overall stability of the EN and for a new use of ENs in detecting alterations between blood and pathology components.