Chemotherapy in Dogs

Hey, guys, My name is Dr. Lehrer here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. Today I'm here with Grumpy. Grumpy is a four year old male neutered English bulldog. And Grumpy, if you guys saw on one of our previous videos about a swollen neck, Grumpy was diagnosed with a certain kind of cancer called lymphoma. And so Grumpy is now undergoing chemotherapy. Now, one of the things that people are usually concerned about with chemotherapy is is it going to look like what my family member or friend or what you see on the movies? And so when people are undergoing chemotherapy in human medicine, a lot of the times they may be trying to achieve a curative goal or outcome. Curative, meaning that they get rid of the cancer completely, kind of like they do in prostate cancer or breast cancer. And with lymphoma in dogs, the outcome is not necessarily to get it curative. So we don't go as high as those doses as they do in humans. The therapy that we do in dogs is typically what we call palliative. And so what that means is we want to knock the cancer back as much as possible, while at the same time not reducing the quality of life for the patient. And so, you know, with lymphoma, there are different options for treatments. And typically the treatment that we use most frequently here is something called the Madison, Wisconsin CHOP protocol. Essentially, the short version is we use four different drugs or five different drugs, and we rotate those drugs on a regular basis, hoping that each time we switch the drug, as the cancer is adapting to that one particular drug, we use the other drug, confuse the cancer, then the cancer starts adapting to that drug, we confuse it again by switching again, and we rotate those drugs once a week for about four months. Now the issue, the good thing is, and what I typically tell people is, look, give chemotherapy a shot if you can afford it, because it is something that the hope is to actually help them and provide a good quality of life. The, the whole purpose that veterinarians get into veterinary medicine is to help their patients have a better quality of life. And if they are not having a better quality of life, then it's not worth it. So you can always try the first round of chemo and see how your pet responds. If your pet responds well, great. If your pet doesn't respond well, then you have to make a decision. Is the kind of chemo that you're doing the kind where they're going to be switching drugs all the time? Or is it. Or is there only one treatment, one medication? If they're switching the drugs all the time then maybe the other drugs will not have the same impact as that one particular drug. And so if it is the same drug then you may have to consider alternative options if they are available. Otherwise if you guys have any particular questions about that, let me know. Now when undergoing chemotherapy it is important to make sure that you're cautious of the urine that's being excreted and the poop that's being excreted as well because sometimes that can have some of the chemotherapeutic agents in it. Otherwise you know when we're at the hospital we use a bunch of gowns, special masks, gloves, shields, all that kind of stuff to help protect us while we're administering these drugs. So if you guys have any questions about this particular topic, leave it in the comment box. If you found this video helpful please give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and share. Thanks for watching and have a great day.