Cancer in Dogs

Cancer is the #1 cause of death in dogs. In people, it is heart disease, then cancer. In cats, its kidney disease, followed by cancer. My household is a statistic: I lost my cat to kidney failure, and both dogs to cancer.

Not all canine cancer is hopeless. I am currently treating 2 dogs with chemotherapy for lymphosarcoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes that has a relatively good prognosis with treatment. I also recently had a successful case of Mast Cell Tumor:


Happy Post Operative Patient

This cute little pug had a tumor on her right front foreleg. Dogs often get mast cell tumors - tumors of the cells that contain granules full of histamine and other mediators of inflammation. Most mast cell tumors can be cured with wide excisional biopsy - meaning you cut out a lot of surrounding tissue, so that you get clean borders, and its gone. Occasionally we see dogs with mast cell tumors that are of a higher grade - much more aggressive. Those come back with a vengeance. Fortunately, most are grade 1 or 2.

This cutie-pie came in with a large, diffuse tumor over her forelimb. Consider your forelimb, with a tumor on it the size of a cookie. Now imagine to get rid of it, I have to cut the tumor out as well large amounts of skin and tissue around that tumor. You can imagine the difficulties closing the skin on this wound.

When I approached this girl's tumor, I mentally told myself not to think about closing the tumor when I cut it out. I just focused on removing it all. After it was gone, I thought, Oh man, now what am I gonna do? There was a huge gap that exposed muscle and tendon. Closing it simply would put the skin edges under too much tension. Tension causes pressure on the capillaries; without blood supply, the skin edges die -- and definitely do not heal.

When I approached the wound as a puzzle, it seemed a little more possible. I made a few tension releasing incisions, and closed the wound in a zig-zag pattern. I pulled the skin together with tension-relieving suture patterns. I used all the tricks I knew, and I still thought the skin at the center corners may not survive.


Immediately after surgery

Fortunately, this girlie did well. The biopsy came back low grade with clean borders. Her skin actually healed well! I rechecked a small swelling last week, to make sure there was no return of tumor. We all breathed a sigh of relief when there were no mast cells seen.

Close up 1 month after the initial surgery.

I don't know who was more pleased with the outcome, the owner or me!