According to an article on Dog health (read belatedly), “In fact, malignant melanoma is the most common oral malignancy in the dog and it accounts for 30-40% of all oral tumors. The mouth is the fourth most common tumor site in dogs. “ Had we read this article beforehand, we would have searched for the hospital specialized in animal cancers and taken you there immediately, when we belatedly found the tumor on your gum on the 5th of October. Then, we would have easily found AMC where you were treated later. Because of our ignorance, we took you to the near-by hospital where you had been the regular patient. The doctor in charge there prescribed the anti-biotic and decided to examine the tumor again in a week. For the general hospital not specializing in cancers, this would be the right step to take and we cannot blame the doctor for this kind of treatment.
If we had dropped you in AMC, the hospital specializing in cancer, you would have received a completely different treatment. They would have either aspirated (withdraw by suction) some of the cells using a syringe and needle or cut out the portion of your tumor by a small surgery and conducted the biopsy test. You would have been diagnosed as Melanoma within a week and would have received the detailed examination and the deep removal surgery of the tumor. What actually happened in the examination a week later was the suggestion that we had better wait and see for one more month, considering your age. However, I consulted with Dr. Soeda whom we met in the dog meeting in September. We learned that the age would not matter as along as the blood test was ok, as this would tell whether you could withstand general anesthesia or not. Upon this advice, we requested the surgery to the doctor. As a result, you received at last the resection surgery in his central hospital (no oncology department) on October 28th, 23 days long after we found your tumor.
Coty Lesson 4 – Don't be afraid of surgery! –
From the above, certainly we learned that there was no reason to avoid the surgery because of your age. Also your surgery would have been “Partial Maxilla Removal“、which could have been conducted after the CT Scan only at a hospital such as AMC, which has the specialized oncology department. At first, this sounded horrifying to us as you would be losing a part of your upper jaw bone. However, later we learned from a Web article that it is a standardized surgery and any dog can withstand it successfully. “The surgeon must remove the entire tumor with a margin of healthy normal tissue to ensure no cancer is left behind. This often means some of the jaw must be removed. These surgeries, known as mandibulectomy and maxillectomy, surprisingly cause little ill effects. Dogs usually return to eating within a day or two of the surgery and we have found the owner's satisfaction with the functional and cosmetic results is higher than 85%.” Needless to say, general hospitals could not have performed this kind of surgery and the early removal surgery at specialized hospitals was essential.