Histiocytic Sarcoma

[Vikram_dhillon]

Hi,
We have a 7 year old Male Doberman. About 3 weeks ago, found a lump on his left hind leg which within a week increased to the inside of his leg down to his groin. Later, there were red rings being formed all across his body which were a small dot when they started and later increased to 3 inches in diameter. the outer circle of the rings where red.

We went to 5 vet's and no diagnosis could be done. Later a biopsy was done and the Results is

- This is a slide of subcutaneous tissue with diffuse proliferation of round to oval cells.
-Rounds to oval tumor cells arranged in chords/sheets having vesicular nucleus. some cells show bi to tri nucleation.
- Nucleus is bean shaped to indentated with coarse chromatin.
- Mitotic figures are frequent (5-7/10 hpf)
- Infrequent multinucleated giant cells are also evident.

Results
" DISCRETE/ROUND CELL TUMOR-HISTIOCYTIC SARCOMA ( THIS IS A MALIGNANT TUMOR WITH A GAURDED PROGNISIS).

Now the vets are suggesting chemo therapy !! Would like to know if anyone has used chemo on dogs and what are the drugs / procedure. Side Effect !!

Thanks , Vikram

[Jaybay]

I am so sorry about your dog.  Cancer behaves in animals the same way it does in humans, and the treatment is basically the same.  Side-effects depend entirely on what drugs will be used for treatment.  Some forms of chemo are done orally with pills and others are infused with an IV.  Some chemo combinations won't have too many terrible side effects and others are horrible.

Any decision to treat a terminal illness in a dog requires us to evaluate quality of life vs. quantiy of life.  If the cure prognosis for this malignancy is poor, it may be kinder to your dog not treat it.  If you haven't spoken with an oncologist yet, that's the person who can best answer your questions and help you make your decision.  In my opinion, there really isn't a one-size-fits-all, right-or-wrong choice in these situations.  All you can do is gather as much information you can and make an informed decision.  Bless you for doing everything you can for your dog.

[peekawho]

I'll only add, in addition to Jaybays excellent answer, is that our Dobe had chemo for bone cancer (which is nearly always fatal).  After he had his leg amputated, he had 5 courses of IV chemo.  He lived for another 3 and a half years, and he was 8 when he was diagnosed.

He was never sick from his chemo, although its of a type that makes humans violently ill.  What I was told was that on the whole, dogs tend to tolerate chemo very well.

I'll echo the suggestion to see a veterinary oncologist for a frank appraisal of his chances.   If the cancer is advanced or has spread, obviously chemo will not help much.  An oncologist can really help you with your decision.

[Vikram_dhillon]

Thanks for your quick detailled replies, our problem is being in India we do not have veterinary oncologist and have general Vet. None of them hv seen/ treated this particular type of Cancer 'Sarcoma' and would like to "try" the Chemo and see the result with no gaurantee of any improvement.
As mentioned in your replies above,  his cancer is in a very advanced stage so i guess we should not go ahead and make our pet suffer more.

Thanks
vikram