Before cancer treatment for a pet can begin, the precise cancer type must be determined, along with whether it has spread, and if so, how far. Photos: dpa
Uh-oh! You’re petting your pooch or kitty and feel a small lump. There are many possible causes, some of them harmless. But it might be a malignant tumour, so what should you do?
“You can monitor the lump for a while to see if it goes away. If it doesn’t, you should visit a vet and have a biopsy taken,” advises Juliane Glatz, a vet at the Centre for Small Animal Medicine in the German municipality of Neunkirchen-Seelscheid.
This is important because “you can’t know whether something is benign or malignant simply by palpating it,” explains Dr Martin Kessler, co-founder of the Hofheim Animal Hospital in Germany, whose cancer treatments include chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
If the diagnosis is cancer, it can spread uncontrollably without treatment. Fortunately, however, the prognosis for pets treated for cancer is now often promising.
“There’s been considerable progress in treatment,” says Kessler. “We better understand malignancies today, and so we can better treat them.”
Magnetic Resonance Imagining (MRI) can help detect tumours in cats.
Before treatment can begin, the precise cancer type must be determined along with whether – and if so, how far – it has spread. Then an individual treatment plan is drawn up. For some cancer types, surgical removal of the tumour is sufficient. But sometimes this is combined with chemo or radiation therapy.
According to Kessler, an operation costs between €500 and €5,000 (about RM2,537 and RM25,376). Radiation therapy costs between €2,000 and €10,000 (RM10,150 and RM50,753), and chemotherapy between €2,000 and €5,000, depending on the size of the animal.
Chemotherapy drugs are given by infusion into a vein, injection or in pill or capsule form. Since animals must lie perfectly still during radiation therapy, they’re put under general anaesthesia first.
“Anaesthesia is the least of the problems,” Kessler says. “We’ve been performing radiation therapy since 2001 and have never lost an animal during anaesthesia.”
Other cancer treatment methods are possible as well, he says. “It’s very individual.”
As the vets describe it, cancer therapy is typically not as taxing for an animal as it is for a person.
“The objective in veterinary medicine is different,” says Glatz, explaining that it’s not just about prolonging life.
“We don’t want a higher cure rate at the expense of quality of life,” Kessler says.
This is why medication dosages are substantially lower for animals being treated for cancer. Potential side effects are meant to be as mild as possible, and many animals consequently have none. Others may vomit, get diarrhoea or won’t eat.
“Their bowels regenerate after several days, and the side effects then cease,” Glatz says.
The number of canine and feline cancer patients is growing as a result of the pets’ increased life expectancy, since their body’s repair mechanisms for genetic damage naturally deteriorate with age.
“The older they are, the higher their tumour risk,” says Kessler.
In the case of dogs, the breed also plays a role. More than 90% of dogs with squamous cell carcinoma, a non-melanoma skin cancer of the nail bed, occurs in standard and giant Schnauzers, according to Kessler.
And Bernese Mountain Dogs are 260 times more likely than any other breed to develop malignant histiocytosis, a type of cancer he says affects the lungs, spleen, liver, lymph nodes and blood.
“Bone tumours are more frequent in large dogs such as Mastiffs and Kangal Shepherd Dogs, as well as in mongrels,” notes Glatz. “They’re quite painful.”
Among the most frequent tumours in cats is lymphoma in the abdominal cavity, a cancer of the lymphatic system whose symptoms include vomiting and weight loss. The breed plays little role as there are relatively few of them, according to Kessler, but he says Siamese cats in particular are susceptible to certain cancers.
There are some things pet owners can do to reduce their fur baby’s cancer risk. The recommendations are similar to those for people, namely eating a healthy diet, getting sufficient exercise and maintaining a normal body weight.
Castration prevents development of some cancer types, for example of the teats or testicles. “On the other hand, it’s unclear if it encourages growth of other tumours,” Kessler says, citing recent studies showing an increased frequency of several very dangerous cancer types in castrated dogs.
However, he points out that these studies were done in the United States, where he says many dogs are castrated in the first year of their life, and often even in the first six months.
“There haven’t yet been studies on whether [the studies’ findings] also apply to Germany, where early castration is extremely rare,” he says. So in light of current scientific knowledge, Kessler concludes there’s no reason to advise against castration because it might raise the cancer risk. – dpa
