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Peer-reviewed veterinary case report

Chemotherapy benefits and survival prediction in dogs with bone

By Schmidt, A F et al.·Published in Preventive veterinary medicine·2016·University Medical Centre Utrecht, United Kingdom·View original on PubMed

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Original publication title: Chemotherapy effectiveness and mortality prediction in surgically treated osteosarcoma dogs: A validation study.

Species:
dog
OsteosarcomaMovement & jointsDogs

Plain-English summary

A study looked at dogs with osteosarcoma, a common bone cancer, to see how effective chemotherapy is after surgery. It found that dogs who had a lower risk of dying within five months after surgery gained the most benefit from additional chemotherapy. The researchers validated their earlier predictions about mortality risk and confirmed that their models can help predict how long a dog might live after treatment. Overall, dogs with a lower risk of short-term mortality seemed to do better with chemotherapy, while the long-term benefits were less clear.

People also search for: dog osteosarcoma treatment · chemotherapy for dogs with cancer · dog bone cancer survival rate

Abstract

Canine osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer, and an important cause of mortality and morbidity, in large purebred dogs. Previously we constructed two multivariable models to predict a dog's 5-month or 1-year mortality risk after surgical treatment for osteosarcoma. According to the 5-month model, dogs with a relatively low risk of 5-month mortality benefited most from additional chemotherapy treatment. In the present study, we externally validated these results using an independent cohort study of 794 dogs. External performance of our prediction models showed some disagreement between observed and predicted risk, mean difference: -0.11 (95% confidence interval [95% CI]-0.29; 0.08) for 5-month risk and 0.25 (95%CI 0.10; 0.40) for 1-year mortality risk. After updating the intercept, agreement improved: -0.0004 (95%CI-0.16; 0.16) and -0.002 (95%CI-0.15; 0.15). The chemotherapy by predicted mortality risk interaction (P-value=0.01) showed that the chemotherapy compared to no chemotherapy effectiveness was modified by 5-month mortality risk: dogs with a relatively lower risk of mortality benefited most from additional chemotherapy. Chemotherapy effectiveness on 1-year mortality was not significantly modified by predicted risk (P-value=0.28). In conclusion, this external validation study confirmed that our multivariable risk prediction models can predict a patient's mortality risk and that dogs with a relatively lower risk of 5-month mortality seem to benefit most from chemotherapy.

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Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26827107/