All Entries Tagged With: "surgical excision"

Treatment Options You Can Consider for a Dog With Skin Cancer

So you took your pet to the vet and confirmed that your dog has skin cancer. Now what do you do? What is the next step? Don’t give up just yet. One good course of action is to consider treatment options for your pet.

Three Mainstream Cancer Treatment Options There are several ways of treating your dog for skin cancer. Depending on the tumor’s grade and stage, procedures such as surgical excision, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and several drugs may be effective or useful.

Two surgical excisions at most may be enough to remove a Grade I tumor. It has been observed, however, that 50% of these cases reappear at the same origin. In some situations, as with Grade II dog skin cancer, and a surgical procedure is not completely accurate, radiation therapy may be employed as well. Most often, the combined efforts of surgery and radiation therapy are considered effective in removing grade I and II dog skin cancer.

In worst cases and scenarios, chemotherapy is looked to as the recommended treatment. Drugs such as Lomustine, Doxorubicin and Corticosteroids may also be added for the effective treatment of advanced dog skin cancer cases.

You may ask, “All this seems very daunting. My dog doesn’t have skin cancer, but I want to make sure he never gets it. What can I do to help prevent Dog Skin Cancer?”

Things That Help Prevent Dog Skin Cancer

Avoid Carcinogens

Mentioned in previous articles is that carcinogens can be found in our surroundings, as well as that we use and consume them daily. In order to lessen your dog’s risk of developing cancer, it is best to avoid the use of carcinogenic substances. They promote the interruption of your pet’s metabolic processes and this may help trigger the growth of cancerous cells in his or her body. Examples of carcinogens are house chemicals–cleaning products should be kept away from your pet. He cannot protect himself from these things the way you and I can.

Right Nutrition “What if my pet already has cancer and is undergoing treatment?” If your dog already has dog skin cancer or any form of cancer, for that matter, and he is going through treatment, then his health may decline not only from the cancer, but from the treatments themselves. Many experts agree that the one thing that may have a huge impact on your pet’s recuperation rate and help tremendously in the treatment process is good nutrition.

The right diet should contain vitamins, minerals, and other substances that are essential in fighting cancer and giving your dog optimum good health.

Grades and Stages of Dog Skin Cancer Explained

There are many articles on cancer readily available, but not all of them are forgiving when using unfamiliar medical jargon. What is Stage II cancer? What is Grade II cancer? In this article, you will find out what all these terminologies mean.

The seriousness of skin cancer is indicated by its “grade”. Consequently, this means that the higher the grade, the more serious the cancer is.

Grade I indicates that the skin cancer isn’t very serious. Tumors classified under this grade mostly grow but do not spread out from the origin. Surgical excision is usually employed to remove these tumors.

Grade II cancer is used to classify it if the cancer’s response is unpredictable towads treatment and prognosis. When placed under this grade, skin cancer may have appeared underneath the skin or subcutaneous tissue, and may be as malignant as they are benign. About 80% of these cases are found to be treatable through radiation and therapy.

Grade III denotes a very aggressive and invasive cancer. 25% of skin cancers are found under this classification. The normal course of action to cope with cancer of this grade are chemotherapy along with surgical excision.

Skin Cancer Stage

Stages of skin cancer determine the extend of spread of the tumor. To properly assess the spread, biopsies and probing of the other lymphoid organs are conducted. The higher the stage, the more serious the tumor spread.

Stage 0 means that there is one tumor growth on the skin, and it has not been completely excised. No lymph node is affected.

Stage I means there is one tumor confined to the skin, with no lymph node involved.

Stage II indicates there is one tumor confined to the skin with regional lymph nodes involved.

Stage III will be used to classify cancer wherein there are multiple, large, and deep-infiltrating tumors in the skin, with no lymph nodes affected.

Stage IV indicates there are one or more multiple tumors in the skin, including metastasis, and lymph notes are involved.

This stage is classified into:

Substage A: no obvious clinical signs of illness

Substage B: apparent clinical signs of illness