The relative risk of a recurrence of cancer is reduced by 60% in dogs whose tumors are completely removed, a new analysis by Oregon State University researchers has found. “You want to get all of the tumor out if you can,” said Milan Milovancev, an associate professor of small animal surgery in the Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine and lead author of the study. “That’s what most veterinarians, including myself, have thought, but this makes it more official. Now we can say, here’s the data.”
The researchers reviewed published veterinary studies and found a recurrence of less than 10% in dogs where the soft tissue sarcoma was completely excised, versus 33% recurrence in cases where the cancer was incompletely excised, meaning there was microscopic evidence that tumor cells remained after surgery.
The findings were published recently in the journal Veterinary and Comparative Oncology. Co-authors are Veronica Irvin, an assistant professor in Oregon State’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences; Katy Townsend, an assistant professor in the Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine; and Joanne Tuohy of Colorado State University.
The researchers reviewed 486 research articles, ultimately focusing on 10 studies that met a set of criteria for inclusion in the analysis. Those studies represented 278 dogs surgically treated for cases of soft tissue sarcoma.
