James Jacobson: One of the types of cancers that you addressed in The Dog Cancer Survival Guide are Perianal, Anal Sac Cancers, cancers of the rear end. I guess I’ll throw this to you first Dr. Dressler, what are the signs and symptoms that you might be looking at if your dog has one of these cancers?
Dr. Demian Dressler: These cancers are similar to some other cancers like such as cancers that occur in the mouth and the oral cavity and that many times they’re not noticed right off the bat and this is for I think obvious reasons and not too many guardians spend a lot of time inspecting their dog’s rear ends. So most of the times the tumors are either caught later after they’ve been there for a while and they’ve gotten pretty big or the veterinarian will noticed it during the course of routine physical and these tumors their growths and they’re right around the rear end and some of them are benign and some of them are malignant and it brings up a really important point which is the veterinarians really need to be doing rectal exams on elderly dogs both male dogs and also female dogs because not all of these tumors are going to be occurring where you can see them with the naked eyes, sometimes they occur deeper and they could be felt with the fingertips as supposed to relying on visual inspection alone.
James Jacobson: Dr. Ettinger, what are your thoughts on Perianal and Anal Sac tumors?
Dr. Susan Ettinger: Yeah, it’s an umbrella term for a couple of different types of tumors Dr. Dressler pointed out and so there are the benign adenomas, which you know regardless of what are types of benign cancers, malignant cancers early detection is so key cause even these benign tumors can be very challenging if they are not detected early and they require a big surgery some of those are actually associated with testosterone levels and so in some of those big tumors you can, if the dog is still intact you can castrate them and the tumors may resolved completely on their own or at least be smaller and more surgical. Then there’s the malignant category, there’s the Anal Sac adnocarcinoma, the sebaceous gland adnocarcinoma they vary on how aggressive they are in their metastatic pattern but it’s definitely one where you want to try to find early and then primary treatments gonna be surgery and some of these cases you may be looking at chemotherapy. Some cases radiation may be required as well. So, it can be a mixed pad of treatment option there’s also some exciting evident that palladia has some anti-cancer properties for these tumors as well, some new options out there as well that could be useful for your pet.
James Jacobson: Dr. Dressler, what options do you commonly use and recommend for perianal and anal sac tumors?
Dr. Demian Dressler: Let me bounced back I forget to mention something which is kind of interesting on the more malignant types of these cancers are secreting chemicals signals on the body which can alleviate the blood calcium and this is another catch for doing early detection testing especially in dogs that are starting usually over the age of seven maybe eight something like that give or take and you can see a high blood calcium level and that can be a flag in some cases only used to have for these types of cancers for your vet to go on a search and many times still felt turned up in a rear end, but back to your question Jim, which had to do with what do we do? So, for the benign one such really important or at least the most common benign one to get your dog neutered later in life because that would help to limit the regrowth of adenomas benign forms the most common benign forms and then in addition to what Dr. Ettinger had pointed out we want to change to a cancer fighting diet, we want to bring in a plant supplements phytochemicals which are called apoptogens those are certain substances that can help turn on cancer cell suicide very beneficial in my experience, immune support. Some of these cases will require stool softeners as a part of the therapy because sometimes there can be some difficulty evacuating solid waste and pooping and we have to pay attention to brain chemistry, we have to pay attention to life quality by deliberately taking steps to decrease stress and improve the life quality of our patients, so we can have a really good long life together.
James Jacobson: Tremendous amount of information in the book on these types of cancers tumors if you have that I invite you to check out in The Dog Cancer Survival Guide. I wanna thank both of you veterinarians for joining us today, Dr. Ettinger in New York, Dr. Dressler in Hawaii, thank you.
Dr. Susan Ettinger: Thanks…
Dr. Demian Dressler: Thank you…
