From:
Lynne Troy
Date: 2001-10-25 11:59:00 UTC
Subject: Re: no surgery recommendation for insulinoma
My 5 year old female had part of her pancreas removed in May due to
insulinoma. Here it is only 5 months later and since she wasn't
herself lately I had her glucose tested. It was 36. So either she
was so stressed from the blood draw it affected the test, or her
insulinoma has returned. With only half of her pancreas remaining,
I'm not sure if a second surgery is warranted or if she'll be treated
with meds.
If I had to do it all over again I'd still go with surgery the first
time around. I still believe it increases their chances.
Lynne
--- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., farrell_cynthia@h... wrote:
> One of our ferrets was just diagnosed with insulinoma, given that
she
> exhibited many of the symptoms and had a fasting BG level of around
> 60. We're unsure of her age, but believe she's about four, and is
> otherwise in good health.
>
> Our vet's recommendation was to not do surgery but treat it
> medically, putting our ferret on Prednisone. A consideration with
> the surgery was that there is no assurance for how long it would be
> effective, and in as little as 6 mo. we might be back where we
> started.
>
> I trust our vet, but from reading here it seems like most
insulinomic
> ferrets do have surgery, so I just wanted to get other opinions.