[riverdawg]

Originally Posted by tsolomon

Yes, went through this twice with one of my French Bulldogs, but based on my experience I would say to do the surgery and then skip the chemo and radiation. You have one of the breeds where mast cell tumors are more common, but there is more to the story than that. With surgery, what you hope for is clean margins when they remove the tumor, but they are fast growing and spider web out quickly.

After the second tumor when we did the second mast cell surgery, they were really pushing us to do the chemo and maybe radiation because they didn't get clean margins and the lab reports graded it as a 2-3. The dog was eight, so we questioned whether we should even think about and the cost which was over $4000. We went to second a onocologist at another clinic and were told several things that the previous onocologist never mentioned. That the singlecoated and pushed nosed breeds get about 50% of the tumors, but they usually aren't as agressive in these breeds. She advised us to send the tissue that was removed to another lab that had worked to establish the grading scale for these tumors to do a slice dissection and they could better determine if the tumor was agressive and needed more treatment. As it turned out, the results indicated that additional treatment wasn't needed.

The problem with surgery is that they have to take out a large piece of the dog to get clean margins and the tumor can be in a place where that is difficult to do. If they don't get clean margins, or they find the tumor to be a stage 2 or 3, that is when they suggest additional treatment with chemo and radiation.

This covers all the corners pretty daggone well.