Animal Cancer care

Oncology

Veterinary oncology is a specialty of veterinary medicine that often involves dealing with extremely scary, stressful and upsetting situations. Our team of highly skilled veterinarians are trained in the diagnoses, treatments and overall management of animal cancers and with their expertise and compassion will try and make the harrowing experience a little more palatable for you and your pets.

Most pets who receive a cancer diagnosis are able to be treated and will survive to often live long and happy lives, and we adopt a variety of tools and processes for diagnosis, treatment and even palliative care.

Cancer care is unique to each pet patient, and following a diagnosis, which involves identification of the type of tumour, the grade and stage of the cancer, our team will assess treatment options which may be surgical, interventional or a combination of the two. Diagnosis involves imaging and biopsies through fine-needle sampling or more invasive surgical excisions where necessary. Sometimes multiple sets of images and tissue samples may be needed to accurately diagnose and treat your pets.

If possible, the surgical approach is a preferred one, as it results in removal of the whole or majority of the tumour, thereby offering your pets the highest chance of a good quality of life. If required, surgery may be followed up by chemotherapy or radiation treatments. Chemotherapy medications for pets are consist of the same chemotherapy drugs used in human beings but administered in specially calibrated and measured dosages as required. Most dogs and cats are able to tolerate chemotherapy well, and except for minor side effects like loss of appetite, moodiness or lethargy which may last 24-48 hours after a treatment cycle, they are largely unaffected. More serious complications like vomiting occur in less than 10% of chemotherapy pets and the most severe side effects like white blood cell suppression (neutropenia) or secondary infections occur less than 1% of the time.

In situations where surgical removal of tumours is not possible, interventional solutions may be adopted to treat your pet. Interventional oncology is used for a variety of reasons including restoring potency to malignant blockages through the use of stents. 

These methods can also provide medication dose escalations to tmours directly without increasing the overall toxicity of the blood stream through chemotherapy or to embolise bleeding or haemorrhage and prevent increased blood flow to tumours.

At MaxPetZ we understand just how important your pets are to you and the emotional toll that dealing with something like cancer can carry. Our team is at hand to support you and your pet throughout their treatments and if needed to provide home care and palliative options wherever required.