From:
Carol J Owens
Date: 2009-02-25 09:32:30 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Treating sebacious epitheliomas---off label use
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
In the past few years our shelter has dealt with about two ugly tumors
of various sizes per year, although lately that is more like four
because we are getting Phoenix's cast-offs, too. They have been
successfully surgically removed except for one little girl who's tumor
on her neck was so huge and weeping blood all the time it was impossible
to have removed it. (Maybe if Dr. Williams did it it would have been
done)
[Moderator's Note: We will assume that is a hello to the FHL's Dr
Bruce Williams rather than mention of a treating vet.]
She was quite anemic and was euthanized.
One of these things was starting to grow on the rump of a personal
ferret. It was about the size of a pea. He is old and has other lymphoma
problems and I have been hesitant to pay for surgery considering his
outlook. I have a tube of medicine to treat my pre-cancerous skin
lesions from sun damage. It works by inhibiting the DNA in the skin from
replicating. Hmmmm, very interesting. I decided to try putting some on
the tumor. It was bleeding when touched but I blotted it and it stopped
enough to put on the cream, just a bit with a swab. After one day there
was an improvement. It had dried up some and was scabbing. This was
continued for a week. The tumor got smaller, shrunk up and had a scab.
That is just what it does for the keratoses. He needed a bath anyway,
he's very hyper-oily, so I kept him in the water long enough to soak off
the scab. The tumor was tiny by this time and was bleeding again so
blotted it and then reapplied the cream. A few days later and it is
almost gone.
I know this may open a can of worms but I would like to see if this
could be tested on others and perhaps prescribed when these tumors are
small. A tiny bit is all that was needed and a physician's sample size
would be adequate. The stuff is expensive. Our insurance covered most of
the cost which would have been $150 for a small tube. One problem would
be that it should only be on tumors where the ferret is unlikely to lick
it. Not on a foot, for instance. There was a warning about people with
some deficiency to not use it. But I know there will be more ferrets
with these tumors coming through and I am going to try using it on them
if the UT (ugly tumor) is small. If this works on another I'll report my
findings.
Carol Owens,
Ferret Friends, Inc.
Tucson AZ
[Moderator's Question:
Carol, are you sure this was not a mast cell tumor?
That would be within normal behavior for a mast cell
tumor even without medication.]
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