Colorado Animal Specialty & Emergency (CASE)
Chemotherapy
Considering treatment of your pet with chemotherapy can understandably sound scary. However, most pet patients go through chemotherapy treatment with minor side effects or no side effects at all. Compared to people undergoing chemotherapy treatment, pets have fewer and less severe side effects because we use lower dosages and do not want our pet-patients to be sick.
In veterinary oncology, our goal is our patients' quality of life. Protocols and dosages can be tailored to your pet to help avoid unwanted side effects. While chemotherapy can attack cancer cells, certain parts of the body are also susceptible to the effects of chemotherapy. These sensitive tissues include the intestinal lining, bone marrow (immune system), and atypically the hair follicles. Therefore, side effects such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, decreased no appetite, and lethargy may occur typically 2-5 days following chemotherapy treatment. Chemotherapy's effects on bone marrow may cause a temporary decrease in the ability for the immune system to fight external diseases. This is expected to happen, but not to a severe degree. It will not effect your pet’s ability to enjoy the dog park or their favorite muddy puddle.
Complete blood counts (CBC) are monitored throughout treatment to ensure that our pet patients' cell counts stay at a good level where they are not at increased risk of infection. If white blood cell counts drop too low, we can alter the dosage for subsequent treatments to avoid this in the future. It is not uncommon for chemotherapy to be delayed to allow the bone marrow more time to recover. Hair loss is minimal and may be seen in dogs that are non-shedding or wire-haired breeds, yet typically is not significant. Terrier or poodle breeds or mixes may experience more hair loss than other breeds.
Chemotherapy is used or recommended in many different types of cancer in pets. It can be used alone or in combination with other treatments, such as surgery and radiation therapy. It can be used when surgery is not possible or cancer is advanced, to shrink large tumors prior to surgery, to treat certain cancer types (such as lymphoma) alone, or can be used following local treatment (surgery or radiation therapy) of a tumor to delay or prevent cancer spread to other parts of the body (metastasis).
Electrochemotherapy
Electrochemotherapy is an alternative local therapy when radiation therapy is not feasible or recommended in certain cases. This is typically used following surgery to prevent or delay regrowth of certain cancer types and sometimes can be used as a solo treatment. Electrochemotherapy combines traditional chemotherapy in conjunction with electrical pulses, which causes the cancer cells to be more permeable. This allows the chemotherapy to be absorbed into and kill the cancer cells. Patients are sedated for the procedure. This generally entails a systemic (intravenous) injection and a local injection (into the tumor site) of chemotherapy. This is followed by an electric pulse to help the cells in that area absorb the chemotherapy. Some redness or swelling can be seen after the injection for a day or two after the treatment. This can be a very effective treatment in some tumor types and in some situations. This is generally well tolerated and rarely, if ever, causes systemic side effects from the chemotherapy itself.
