From:
dr_bruce_williams
Date: 2002-06-16 22:13:00 UTC
Subject: Re: My Roxie is gone, i have a question
--- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., "dan christen" <christen.d@p...>
wrote:
> I lost my Roxie today. Within less than 72 hours her life crashed,
she had surgery this afternoon, for what was assumed an avoidable
blockage only to find that the was blocked, by a pyeloric
endocarcinoma. .... My question is this, who has dealt with this
before and with what results. We could have taken her to a
specialist, but she would have had to endure 24 more hours of
discomfort, and whatever else she was going through, and i was told,
they are good for about 6 months and success rate with this sort of
surgery is minimal.
Dear Donna:
I am hesitant to agree with this prognosis, as I know of no reports
of prognostic information for this type of tumor. There are very
uncommon, and we really don't have enough survival information on
them to say how long these animals live, how surgery affects them,
etc.
Also, I guess that I have to ask another question - how was the
diagnosis of pyloric adenocarcinoma made within 24 hours, especially
on a weekend. Most labs take several days to a week, so I wonder if
this isn't a provisional diagnosis - in fact, was the tumor sent off
at all. It does little good, unfortunately, for you to seek
information on a rare tumor in ferrets which may or may not be backed
up by a true analysis.
True intestinal adenocarcinomas tend to be relatively invasive, but
if there is no metastasis to local nodes, may be removed and have a
decent percentage of animals survive. With the equivalent of one
month to a year, even a survival rate of six months is pretty good
from their standpoint (but perhaps just not from ours.)
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams, DVM