Chemotherapy for Pets.
When I mention the word chemotherapy for someone’s pet, the first reaction is normally “I wouldn’t want to put him through it”. Many people associate chemotherapy with nasty side-effects such as vomiting and hair loss. In pets, things are very different.
For people, the aim of chemotherapy is often to cure the disease. In dogs and cats, this is not always our aim. What we try to do in many cases is send the cancer into remission and try to keep it there for an extended period of time. We use lower doses of drugs so we are less likely to cure the disease, but we are also much less likely to get bad side effects. The way I think of it is like treating arthritis or heart disease. We know at some point the animal won’t respond to the treatment, but in the meantime we can make the animal feel well again. We find that for must patients undergoing chemotherapy, close friends and family can’t even tell that the animal is having treatment.
We treat several cases of lymphoma each year, and can improve survival times from just a few weeks without treatment to over a year with treatment. And because the dogs don’t feel sick after each treatment (and they get spoilt with roast chicken while in here) they are normally very happy to come in for each treatment.
Over the last couple of years there has been an exciting new concept in chemotherapy called “metronomic chemotherapy”. This generally involves giving a small dose of medication daily to stop tumour growth, and can have a remarkable effect on some tumours. For example, before this new concept came along, a dog with a sarcoma on its leg would need the leg amputated to control the disease. Now in most cases we can remove the bulk of the tumour then put the dog on daily tablets to prevent further growth. This medication can stop the tumour coming back for several years and allows the dog to keep it leg. It doesn’t “cure’ the disease but gives the dog normal quality of life again, which will always be our goal.
The promise I make to all my cancer patients is I will never give treatments that extend life at all costs. I aim to make them feel well again, and get them back to the animal they were before they had cancer.