When my dog was dying from synovail cell sarcoma, the few abstracts I could find  were restricted and had to be purchased, yet the studies are funded by public money and public donations.. Why isn't the public allowed access to research papers funded by the NIH, Morris Animal Foundation,  the AKC Canine Health Foundation etc? It seems unethical that one must purchase research studies or worse yet, subscribe to particular publications/journals to be able to obtain information that might be useful. Vet schools are often in the same boat and must spend thousands of dollars in journal subscriptions to gain access to information that should readily be available. I am curious why this is.

Thank you so much for talking to Tripawds and for taking questions.

Susan Spinhirne

I'm really concerned about the study that removing the primary cancer site makes the cancer metastasize faster.  If that is so (and I hope I misunderstood) then aren't we in a  no-win situation -  Don't remove it and it doesnt spread but they have horrible pain and broken bones or remove it and they die sooner.

Debra

Okay here are a few, although they are kind of revisions of the question(s) asked by others.

1) Is there an advantage in running Carboplatin for 5-6 rounds rather than just four? One tripawd member understood her vet to say this was recently shown to increase survival by an average of 200 days compared with survival based on four treatments along. (She is checking that with her oncologist who obtained the information at a recent conference in the states.)

2) My main question: What is the current thinking of the the pros and cons of having chemo or anti-angiogenesis begin before surgery?

3) It seems that quite a few dogs develop mets within a few to several weeks of their amputation. Wouldn't it make sense to have more thorough scans done at the start when figuring out what sort of treatment plan (e.g., amputation, radiation, chemo)? Like many others, my dog only had chest x-rays at the start. We did not know if his met (a subcutaneous met) found eight weeks later had been present before chemo or developed during it. Such information might have influenced the course of treatment. There have been many dogs on this site who were found to have advanced mets much earlier (after 2-4 weeks), but no imaging had been done at the time of the initial diagnosis.

All good questions...

Since we're struggling with the decision of whether to start chemo or not, I'd love to hear more about ways to tell if it's already spread. I think shiloanne worded it better than I can, though! Our vet can tell Holly's had her cancer for 21 months (from looking at an old x-ray where they can now see the start of it), and said it appeared to be not aggressive like osteosarcoma normally is, and was well differentiated. So even though the x-rays look clean, and her bloodwork looks good, and the surrounding tissue samples taken during her amputation were clean, we'd love to know if there is additional diagnosis we should be looking into before deciding on starting chemo. (sorry I got wordy here)

This is not a question but a suggestion to Holly to start a topic with the question she listed above (whether any others scans might be useful at this stage). I for one have a strong opinion on that one based on our experience (as I bet Shilo does too), but don't want to get off the topic of posing questions for the Dr that is listed here.