Alarming Diagnoses Lead to Concerns of Cancer Epidemic
Two days ago an adorable two-year-old Schnauzer mix came to the hospital where I was working in Oakland, California. The dog had a soft swelling on the bridge of his nose. Many of his lymph nodes were enlarged.
I collected samples of the mass and lymph nodes using a procedure called fine needle aspiration. Fine needle aspiration is simple and does not require sedation or anesthesia in most pets.
Yesterday the diagnosis came in: the dog has an aggressive cancer called lymphoma.
Lymphoma is, unfortunately, very common in ten-year-old dogs and cats. It is supposed to be almost nonexistent in young pets. However, in the last few months I have diagnosed lymphoma in two other animals younger than three. One was a Labrador Retriever in San Francisco. The other was a Dachshund in San Mateo.
That’s three young dogs, of three different breeds, in three different cities with a cancer that is supposed to occur almost exclusively in elderly pets.
Is this an epidemic? Statistically speaking, my experiences mean nothing at all. The three cases of juvenile lymphoma are more likely to be coincidence than an epidemic.
But, coincidence or not, I will confess that I have been losing sleep over the matter, and wondering whether other vets are having similar experiences.
Photo: Dr. Glenn Littel
You have questions. 
I have had several dogs diagnosed with cancer. I truly believe its in the food. Too many chemicals and preservatives. Nutro one of the ones who doesn’t have chemical preservative, had problems just last year with pet deaths. I’m sick of it all. I’m going back to just feeding table scraps. If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for them. Think of it this way, every day, the dogs get feed the same kibble food for their entire life–what would happen to us if we did the same? Come on now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
We lost a three year old cat last year to Lymphoma. She was such a sweet girl who did not deserve such a fate.
We tried to give her the best chance of beating it with chemo treatments but lost her anyway.
I will always wonder what causes such a disease in a creature that does nothing to bring it upon itself.
My heart still aches…We miss her so very much
Well, Doc, sad to say…I have a sweet bratty little calico cat aged about a year. I rescued her from a PET STORE that had forgotten they had her! She was running around loose feeding on left over lunches and whatever pet food she could get into. Upon getting her eating by re-establishing her digestive system, I found a lump in the uterus area. She was about 2 months of age at the time! Into the vet we go for shots, etc, anyway. Had him X-ray her. Bad news! Tumor! It had spread up into the mammary glands. Doc said that aggressive treatment was to add a lot of pain and asked if I wanted to put her down. I replied in the negative. I’ve dealt with cancer in my friends. Both the two-legged kind as well as the four-legged kind. She has “good days” and “bad days”. She will tell ME when she is tired and ready to go! When she “rabbits” and is wincing, she comes to me for gentle tummy massages which seem to ease things and “the circus is on” very soon. My other cat, Sabrina, is very indulgent of the little one and lets her get away with murder! A note..I read where labs were feeding green tea to mice, rats,etc in their drinking water. They had found tumors were shrunk with the green tea groups! So under the “couldn’t hurt” treatment, I have been adding green tea to their drinking water. Both cats seem to relish it! China Baby has become more active with less “bad days”. I also grow fresh catnip for them and give it every other day. China Baby seems to settle her stomach by it. I’ll not cheat her out of a single sunrise until she is ready to go.
A couple of years ago we had a 3 year old black male cat that we raised as a kitten from a shelter. He was having severe chronic nasal congestion, and on one vet visit, the vet discovered a mass the size of a golf ball on his right kidney. It turned out to be an aggressive lymphoma which had spread so that he had tumors in his nasal passages and elsewhere. We had the kidney removed, did chemo, tried everything at great expense, but he was dead within 2 months.
Later that same year we lost a 4 year old calico to a very similar scenario. Right now, we have a very young black female (less than 2 years) who has chronic nasal congestion and we are dreading the diagnosis… hopefully it’s just polyps.
I doubt whether anyone keeps reliable records on these things, but it sounds like there is a lot of this going on out there.
Dr. Barchus,
The very first case of lymphoma I ever diagnosed was in a 20-month-old Doberman Pinscher I saw in my very first month of practice after graduation….almost 21 years ago.
Since then, I’ve seen a number of “young” animals with various types of cancer…..one an exceedingly rare case of leiomyosarcoma in a barely-one-year-old Golden Retriever, also early in my practice career. So, I don’t think it’s as new phenomenon.
While I haven’t seen as many in as short a time as you just did (more like an average of 3-4 per year for me), I don’t think it’s “rare” or even reported as such. My colleague friends seem to have similar experiences in this area (SE US). It may just be the “rule of 3″ you have run into….it’s curious how that seems to work out so often (like the fact I’ve done 3 FHO’s on small dogs in the past month after not having had to do a single one for a year prior to that.)
I also saw a definitely increased number of cancer patients during a 4-year period in which I had a practice less than a mile from a bay chronically polluted with industrial waste. In my opinion, it paralleled a high incidence of human cancer in the same area. Coincidence? I didn’t think so and sold the practice to move elsewhere!
Have you posted your concerns or solicited opinions on VIN?
As to the cats in the readers’ comments, are you SURE that they were FeLV/FIV negative??? (It takes two tests, more than 3 months apart, to be fairly certain that’s the case.) You have to authorize such testing….it is not “automatically” done along with vaccination visits.
With lymphoma and other types of cancer there is a very HIGH correlation of cancer in cats who test positive for those very COMMON viruses in cats. Owners always seem to be surprised when they get the cancer diagnosis after having declined basic viral testing during health checkups prior to that.
Please make sure your cats are properly tested. Current recommendation is at the first kitten visit, then again at time of spay/neuter. Higher-risk cats are tested at additional future intervals.
I can’t help but caution jt that you’re heading down a very dangerous road due to a very dangerous assumption.
Just because it’s good enough for us doesn’t mean it’s good enough for them…..there is a long list of foods we can eat safely that are toxic to dogs and cats. Even the ones that are not specifically toxic can be harmful to them, as their digestive systems differ from ours. Pancreatitis (a very serious, painful situation that can rapidly turn fatal is most commonly caused by feeding table scraps. We see at least once patient a day for that, plus several more cases of gastroenteritis due to that. In my practice, it is the SINGLE most common thing we see on an everyday basis, in fact.
Please don’t jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. There ARE good foods out there. (IMO, Nutro has never been one of them, btw.) All of my dogs have lived to ripe old ages on diets of the same “boring” kibble every day of their lives. I’m a “mean” mom and don’t feed people food to them…..ever.
Hope you don’t mind my interjecting my opinion, Dr. Barchus!
Our 2-year old mixed breed dog (Rott-Pittbull) was diagnosed with Lymphoma . The tumor in his stomach was removed as well as his spleen for safe-keeping. The doc “got it all”. However, this particular cancer, being what it is, grew right back within 2-months time. We were in Germany and the German vet was so upset. He had never seen lymphoma in such a young dog. My husband, who is a medical doctor, researched this cancer hoping for a miracle. There was none. As far as he could find, no dog has ever survived more than a year or two.
my little dachshund died yesterday in my arms. i’m wondering if he might have had cancer. the vet was concerned that he might have. he was just 10 years old.
My best friend died the day after Thanksgiving to lymphoma. I had adopted him, and he must have been older than I thought. The doc thought he lived to be about 11. I had him for six years. Reading about the possibility of this happening to even younger dogs rips my heart apart. My baby didn’t even get to live as long as he deserved. I hope we can find some answers to this one day. What is this horrible disease killing our most innocent creatures?
I lost my cat Mongo 6 months ago to intestinal lymphoma. We went the route of chemo. He showed improvment at first but then just went downhill very quickly.The vet we went to only treat Cancer at their office Newburgh NY. Any way she said it started out from his irriatable bowel syndrome as a constant inflamation of his system.
I lost my beloved Tensing to Lymphoma in Dec 08 He lived 9 years and 5 days! We thought we had it beat, because he was 23 months past dx, but it just all fell apart, and in a week he was gone! It really stunk, because it was his favorite time of year! He had made it through another brutal hot summer in MO!
It is the food, shoots, meds, chipping and lawn chemicals! I would never buy another bag of dog food out of a supermarket again! Nutro is under investigation again! I would never buy anything from them, because I had bought their supposedly natural dessert, and it put Tensing into one of his drag him out of the grave times after treatment. It halted treatment for a month! Not cool! Thankfully we recovered and went on! I would of never changed a thing in putting him through chem! We almost did it!