Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat
Tripawds is your home to learn how to care for a three legged dog or cat, with answers about dog leg amputation, and cat amputation recovery from many years of member experiences.
Join The Tripawds Community
Learn how to help three legged dogs and cats in the forums below. Browse and search as a guest or register for free and get full member benefits:
Instant post approval.
Private messages to members.
Subscribe to favorite topics.
Live Chat and much more!
Register
Log In
Members
Add Topic
Offline
Hi. I have a 5 year old border collie who was diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma, grade 3. The treatment options are radiation therapy or amputation. Amputation is more curative. Does anyone have experience or recommend more testing prior to such a big surgery? (eg., MRI or ultrasounds to see if there is any spread). Thanks in advance.
Hi Michelle, welcome! Hope you don't mind I moved your post here but this is a good place to talk about pre-surgery questions like this.
So my question would be, what does your vet recommend? Did you see an oncologist to get a workup on the cancer? If there is spread usually a CT scan will show but where it spreads depends on the type of cancer as far as I know, and that's what determines where the CT scan will be done. For example, osteosarcoma usually metastasizes to the lungs so x-rays and often now CT scans are done to check for mets in that location. The question is, what would you do with that information if the diagnostics did show spread? Would that change the course of the treatment you decide to do?
Soft tissue sarcomas usually re-grow, it's difficult to get the entire cancer so that's why amputation is more curative (usually).
The good news is that a young Border Collie has every chance to bounce back and be just as bouncy as ever. They're pretty resilient!
Thanks so much for getting back to me. Niko had a chest x-ray and it was normal. He was seen by an oncologist who recommended seeing a radiation oncologist. The radiation oncologist provided the 2 options of intensive radiation or amputation, with amputation being more curative. I guess I was thinking that if he was scanned and there was more spread then I would hate to put him through such a big surgery.
You've definitely done all the homework and I can see why you would be reluctant to go forward with the amp if there are mets. Many people face this decision. A CT scan can certainly pick up "micro metastasis" better than an x ray so if that's in your budget it's one way you can decide with more certainty.
1 Guest(s)
