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Cancer Cure?

by DemianDressler · 3 comments

Recently I heard the comment that medicine (in my case, veterinary medicine) is primitive.

This is a very interesting comment, especially if we are talking about canine cancer.

When you are coping with a canine cancer diagnosis, the question of curing cancer comes up frequently.  Now, shifting back to this idea about medicine being primitive, let’s look at some  assumptions so we can clear up some concepts about cancer in the dog.

First, the idea of cancer care being primitive would be based on expectations.  Second, many of us have heard that we do not have a cure for cancer.  “The Cure For Cancer” is a goal of modern science.

But wait.  I recently read in USA today that at an event in Estes, Colorado, it was proclaimed that we cure half of the dogs with cancer.

If we are able to cure half the dogs with cancer, why is it that we are still searching for the cure for cancer?

Well, we are of course talking about the other half.

So what makes a cancer curable?  Let’s look at a concept that needs more attention: systemic disease.

If a cancer is located in a single location in the body, and that location can be removed surgically, and there are no cancer cells (or late stage pre-cancerous cells) left in the body, then we have a situation where the cancer can be cured.

The situation is different if there are cancer cells dispersed in the body, either in the area around the surgery site (having moved from the central location into the surrounding neighborhood), or in a distant location (spread in the circulation).

In these cases, the phrase used in The Dog Cancer Survival Guide is Hard to Cure.  These are the ones where the cancer cells have spread into the body, and this is what most clinicians might call systemic disease.

Those cancers where the cells are isolated to a single location can be removed with surgery.  This is perhaps the only way, at this point in time, that cancers can be cured.

Perhaps this is why my client made the statement that medicine is primitive. The sole way that we cure cancers in veterinary medicine is by cutting them out, when it is possible.

It is important to realize what the goals of treatment are for those cancers that are more systemic (Hard to Cure).  These would include lymphosarcoma, osteosarcoma, many mammary cancers, hemangiosarcoma, osteosarcoma, many mast cell tumors, and others.

Other Hard to Cure cancers would be the ones that might be removable with surgery, but are in a location that makes them difficult to remove.  These tend to send out cells into the surrounding neighborhood around the tumor itself. Common examples are fibrosarcoma, squamous cell carcinomas, transitional cell carcinoma (often in the bladder), and spindle cell tumors of various kinds.

So, the bottom line is finding out what type of cancer we are dealing with is critical.  This is part of your data collection stage of the plan in The Dog Cancer Survival Guide.  Once this is established, clear goals and expectations can be defined by you and your vet or oncologist.

Best,

Dr D

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About the Author


Demian Dressler dog cancer veterinarianDr. Demian Dressler, DVM is known as the "dog cancer vet" and is author of Dog Cancer Survival Guide: Beyond Surgery, Chemotherapy & Radiation. Visit his blog and sign up free to get the latest information about canine cancer. Go to http://DogCancerBlog.com.

 

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine was just published that showed that human cancer patients lived both longer and better with hospice care.

Patients with a type of lung cancer lived almost 2 months longer with hospice care than those who did not.  Similar trends have been seen with other terminal diseases and cancer types (breast, prostate, colon, pancreas and others) where the longevity was increased by 20-69 days with hospice care.

So how does this relate to our four legged loved ones?

Well, we need to look at the cause for the life extension in hospice centers.  Is the reason for gain in longevity due to better care at these facilities, more attention to detail and intervention?  It is possible.

But the focus of hospice is palliation and pain reduction…life quality increases. The main goal of this type of care is the physical, emotional and psychological well being of the patient.

I believe that this study may actually point to the link between attention to these aspects of care and longevity, as opposed to  life quality.  In other words, by addressing comfort care in a real way, we can perhaps gain time for our dogs.

How could this be?

In The Dog Cancer Survival Guide, several different ways this can happen are explained.  A clear connection is that chronic pain itself does a lot of unhealthy things to a body, whether human or dog.  One of the biggest is it creates stress, which suppresses cancer-fighting white blood cells like NK cells and cytotoxic T cells.

The end of life stage in the path of dog cancer can be brutal.  However, there are some who actually are able, by hook or by crook, to create something beautiful out of it.  Usually this is done by paying attention to closure, by scheduling time for appropriate and healthy connection with your loved dog.

Pain management, touch therapies, fluids, appetite stimulants and medications for nausea, caloric intake, overcoming social isolation, sunlight, sleep, bedsore prevention, and proper home nursing care to help with body functions are some of the pillars of end of life stage care.

Best,

Dr D

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About the Author


Demian Dressler dog cancer veterinarianDr. Demian Dressler, DVM is known as the "dog cancer vet" and is author of Dog Cancer Survival Guide: Beyond Surgery, Chemotherapy & Radiation. Visit his blog and sign up free to get the latest information about canine cancer. Go to http://DogCancerBlog.com.

 

A very common question that readers post on this blog goes something like this:

“I found a lump.  It is (description) and is on my dog’s (body part).  Is it anything to worry about?”

It helps to widen back and look at lumps in dogs generally to help clarify this topic.  What’s the number one cause of dog death, if we exclude euthanasia?  Dog cancer.  How does dog cancer most commonly look to the naked eye?  It looks like a lump.

When we find a lump on a dog, this should be a red flag.  A certain reaction should be happening in the mind of the dog lover. First, both veterinarians and dog guardians should know the number one most dangerous health problem that exists for dogs, the most likely problem that could take a dog away..cancer.

We have been negligent in spreading this information to dog guardians.  And by “we”, I include the group I am a member of: veterinarians.  Vets should have this information and be spreading it in the same way we talk about parvo and heartworm disease.

For some reason we don’t.  Perhaps it is because bringing up cancer in a discussion feels a little out of bounds since we don’t want to upset our clients.  Or it could be that there has not been a marketing push like there is for parvo vaccination or for heartworm disease.  Since we have access to preventatives in these cases, pharmaceutical companies make a point to help spread the word about these diseases.

This is not wrong, of course.  Why not protect a dog from a problem when it is prudent to do so? (The vaccination debate is discussed elsewhere…)

So why would a guardian wonder what to do if a lump popped up?  Clearly, if a woman found a lump in her breast, she would most likely be at the doctor’s promptly.  Why?  Because there has been enough press on breast cancer that finding the lump would raise a red flag, sparking the thought that breast cancer happens.

But in veterinary medicine, there is a mental disconnect between lumps in dogs and cancer, in spite of the statistics.

The answer to the question of what to do if a lump is found on a loved dog is this: go to your vet and get it checked!  Get it aspirated, get it biopsied, get the data you need!

Can a vet diagnose a lump by looking at it?  Very occasionally, but usually not.  Can a vet diagnose a lump by squeezing it? Very occasionally, but usually not.

One of my pet peeves (sorry, bad pun) is the diagnosis of a benign fatty tumor based on looking and touching alone.  Soft, squishy bumps under the skin could indeed be harmless lipomas.  But, they could also be dangerous growths like mast cell tumors, hemangiopericytomas, subcutaneous blood filled hemangiosarcomas, or liposarcomas.  These all feel soft and squishy.

This brings a case to mind.  Three weeks ago, a client brought her dog in to have a lump checked out.  This had been previously diagnosed as a harmless lipoma at another veterinary hospital.  It felt soft and squishy.

A fine needle aspirate was done on the growth at my hospital.  I inserted a syringe with a needle in the growth, and pulled back on the plunger.  Did fat enter the needle hub, which is what a fatty tumor would yield?  No.  The syringe filled with blood.

This was no lipoma.  Blood filled swellings have their list of possibilities too, but one of them is a hemangiosarcoma under the skin, a malignant cancer.  And over the 6 months that this growth had slowly increased in size with nothing done, the mass had swelled to about 4 inches across.

Now we had a big problem to deal with that could have been caught a long time ago.

The bottom line is this:  remember the dog cancer statistics.  According to the National Canine Cancer Foundation, 1 in 3 dogs will contract cancer in their lifetime, and this number increases to 1 in 2 if the dog is more than 10 years of age.

Get dog lumps checked!

For more information on dog lumps, how they are diagnosed, and their complete treatment options, check out The Dog Cancer Survival Guide.

Best,

Dr D

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About the Author


Demian Dressler dog cancer veterinarianDr. Demian Dressler, DVM is known as the "dog cancer vet" and is author of Dog Cancer Survival Guide: Beyond Surgery, Chemotherapy & Radiation. Visit his blog and sign up free to get the latest information about canine cancer. Go to http://DogCancerBlog.com.

 

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