Dr. Mike: Hello, I’m Dr. Mike. Today, we’re going to talk about mast cell tumors in dogs. These types of tumors are very unique and how it behaves and how we treat it. To learn more about mast cell tumors, we’re going to meet with Dr. Mona Rosenberg who is board certified in Veterinary Oncology.
Dr. Rosenberg: Mast cell tumors are skin tumors that can occur in any dog or cat. Certain breeds are at high risk than other breeds and they typically occur on the skin or just under the surface of the skin. Mast cell tumors can look like just about anything. The classic is a little button or pink hairless raised little nodule on the surface of the skin, but sometimes they can occur as we said before underneath the skin or it might even feel just like a little fatty tumor.
Ideally, if you suspect that your pet has a mast cell tumor you should bring your pet to your family veterinarian for more information. If your veterinarian should confirm that your pet has a mast cell tumor, then he or she will recommend a number of tests in order to determine how advanced the disease is and might consult with a local board certified veterinarian oncologist as to what the best treatment options are.
Treatment options for mast cell tumors can include anything from surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy and often the outcomes are excellent. Prior to surgical removal of a mast cell tumor, your family veterinarian will want to run several test. The first will be blood work, to make sure that your pet is healthy overall and can withstand the anesthesia. Second is your analysis for the same reason. In fact, about 20% of cancer patients will have urinary tract infections without actually showing any signs. It’s important prior to surgery to know whether and infection exists.
Additionally, depending on the age of your pet, a chest x-ray maybe warranted not necessarily to look for spread of cancer since mast cell tumors rarely go to the lungs but again to make sure that we’re not finding anything else that would change your approach in making sure that we’re providing the best treatment for your pet as well as focusing on quality of life.
Once we’ve confirmed that your pet has a mast cell tumor, the next step typically is to surgically remove it. Now, mast cell tumors grow somewhat differently from a lot of cancers and that they stand very far finger like projections into the surroundings tissue. So, even if your pet has a very small mast cell tumor you’ll find when you pick your pet up post operatively that there’s a really big surgical incision and the purpose of that is so that your veterinarian can attempt to get clean margins all the way around. Only by achieving those clean, wide surgical margins can we attempt to prevent the tumor from coming back.
Post operatively, the pathologist is just going to tell us the grade of tumor. Once are the best because in most situations, if you can cut them out they don’t come back and they don’t spread or metastasize to other locations. Grade two are the most common, 40% of those will metastasize, grade three is unfortunately are the worst because they have the highest incidents of spread to other parts of the body.
Once we’ve identified that information specially if it’s a two or three we talk about staging your pet which is a measure of how advanced or hopefully not is the cancer to begin with. Most grade tumors don’t spread but they do like to come back in the same or similar location especially if we’ve not been able to achieve complete surgical margins.
Radiation therapy is exquisitely useful for treating grade two mast cell tumors that had been incompletely excised. If we’re dealing with a more aggressive mast cell tumor, then we need to take a more systemic approach to your pet and in that situation what we would do is talk about the use of chemotherapy. Most people really don’t like the idea of using chemotherapy because of a personal experience that they may have had either with the family member of perhaps even themselves. But I’m very happy to say that 85% of the dogs that we treat with chemotherapy regardless of the type of cancer actually have no clinical signs associated.
They have no vomiting, no diarrhea, no lose of appetite, they have great happy lives and that’s very important to us with all of our cancer patients because the most important aspect is to provide extended good quality time. If the treatment is going to be worse than the disease, we would never want to do that because it’s all really about quality of life.
The most important thing to remember if you suspect that your pet has a mast cell tumor is to make sure that you take your pet in to see your family veterinarian for a full physical examination and an analysis of the lump or bump that you’ve identified that you’re suspicious of. Just because the pet has cancer, it doesn’t mean that it's a life sentence. There are slots that we can do to provide extended quality of life.
Dr. Mike: Dr. Rosenberg discussed some very important points that I’d like to summarize.
First, mast cell tumors can vary in their appearance and therefore require a veterinary attention to diagnose. Once diagnosed, your veterinarian will surgically remove the mass with wide surgical margins. This means the incision will be much larger than you would expect for the size of the tumor. After the tumor is removed, it will be graded to determine what additional treatment if any will be required. If radiation or chemotherapy are required, they can be performed in many cases with little to no side effects. Finally, if you see or feeling lump on your pet, bring it to the attention of your veterinarian for proper diagnosis and treatment options, I’m Dr. Mike and thanks for watching.
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