Fibrosarcomas in Dogs

Foreign. Hey guys, Dr. Lara here today. Today the topic is going to be something called fibrosarcomas. To give you a heads up, it is going to be kind of graphic. So I want you guys to either be aware, prepared, or if you decide not to, just to listen. So today I am here with Mocha. Mocha is an 8 year old female spayed rottweiler and she is here today because we're doing a follow up post radiation therapy. As you guys can see, she's got scabs all over her nose and the tumor on her nose, this is something that pretty uncommon, at least the way they're presented. The way hers presented was she got kneed in the face, developed a swelling. We did some biopsies on it. At that time it was way, way, way smaller. Came back as, you know, just like as a what we call a hematoma. That is usually not something that's a concern. And then she went ahead, the tumor got bigger and we ended up going, she ended up going to a specialty facility. They went ahead to do a super aggressive surgery. And when that biopsy came back, that particular biopsy said that it was just abnormal scar tissue. And so at that point the decision was made that we probably wouldn't put her through any sort of radiation therapy just because the recommended radiation therapy was going to be, I want to say, three to five days a week for about three to four weeks. So she was, we were looking about 18 sessions of radiation therapy for her. And so this has all happened over a matter, I want to say of about a year to a year and a half. And now we have this thing and we're pretty certain that it is what we call a fibrosarcoma. This particular fibrosarcoma is what we would call a low, high fibrosarcoma. What that means is it's low histopathologically speaking. So when we go ahead and we do the biopsy, when they look at, when the histopathologist or specialist looks at it under the microscope, under the microscope, it doesn't look like a really aggressive tumor. But the high part of that means, biologically speaking, how it acts seems to be acting like a more aggressive tumor. With this particular dog mocha, what ends up happening is these tumors usually do have the possibility of spreading. It's not a high percentage, I want to say. I think it's about 10% of them can spread. Aggressive surgical removal is typically the treatment of choice. And the issue with, at least with moca is that we didn't Get a clear cut diagnosis of fibrosarcoma, otherwise, you know, the route would have potentially been different. And that happened, I want to say twice that the biopsies came back from to two different places that it wasn't fibrosarcoma at that time. And so now the other possibility that you have to be aware of with fibrosarcomas, even though the treatment of choice is surgical removal, it is very possible that it may come back. Fibrosarcomas are more prominent in large breed dogs and they usually, if they are close to bony tissue, they usually will break down that bony tissue. That was something else that was odd about this particular one because she ended up when we've done CT scans on her. And whenever you have a dog that has a tumor on the nose or in the nose, CT scans are the way to go to evaluate the growth. It wasn't penetrating the bone, it wasn't destroying the bone. So again, two things that are making it seem like it's not a fibrosarcoma, which makes this case that much rarer. And so with those particular cases, again, going back to how to treat them, one of the other things is if it is in an area where you may not be able to get a lot of tissue, if you're open to the idea, you may want to consider radiation therapy to go ahead and try and get rid of as many of the cells as possible. With the radiation therapy after the surgery to remove the major tumor, there is a product called. It's a synthetic graft from a company called Vetrix. And so that is something that sometimes can be put in places like this, which may help to recharge or slow down the growth of abnormal. It is something that is not super traditional. So it would be something that if you are watching this video and you want to make the recommendation to your veterinarian or to your veterinary surgeon, that would be something that you would have to go ahead, research for yourself and ask that particular surgeon if it's something that they're open to using. And if not, would they be willing to use it and, you know, getting all that information for them. In this particular case, Mocha has now had radiation therapy. With radiation therapy, the side effects from radiation therapy you can see would be kind of the breaking down of the skin. You can see the scabs, and if it's close to the face, if you look at her left eye, you can actually see that her left eye looks a little different than the right eye. And the reason being is because she will also get some depigmentation of her cornea but or not cornea her iris but also she'll get dry eye so that is something that usually will go away. The side effects from radiation therapy will typically last about two to three weeks from the last session of radiation. Mocha is about three weeks out now so we were talking about potential quality of life about a week ago and we have seen significant improvement. So you're gonna wanna hold out for about two or three weeks after your last session of radiation therapy and the radiation oncologists say that it takes about three to four months if you have a larger tumor for you to see the most significant effects from the radiation. If you guys have any questions about this particular video, please leave it in the comment box. If you found this video helpful, please give us a thumb. Subscribe and if you know somebody who potentially needs to see this, please share it with them. Hope you guys are being safe and take care of yourselves. Bye bye.