Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Low-grade skin mast cell tumors in dogs that spread at diagnosis
By Bae, Sohee et al.·Published in Veterinary and comparative oncology·2020·Department of Clinical Sciences, United States·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Histologically low-grade, yet biologically high-grade, canine cutaneous mast cell tumours: A systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of dogs with low-grade skin tumors called mast cell tumors (cMCT) were studied to understand their treatment and outcomes, especially when these tumors had spread to other parts of the body. The most common treatment involved surgery along with chemotherapy, which was used in about 69% of the dogs. The results showed that dogs with tumors that had spread to nearby lymph nodes lived significantly longer than those with tumors that had spread to distant organs. Surgery was found to be an important factor in improving survival rates for these dogs.
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Abstract
Low-grade canine cutaneous mast cell tumour (cMCT) with metastasis at the time of treatment is uncommonly reported, with few studies focusing on this specific clinical entity. The specific objective of this study was to systematically review the veterinary literature and perform a meta-analysis summarizing the clinical presentation, treatments reported and clinical outcomes from dogs with histologically low-grade cMCT and metastasis present at initial treatment. A total of 980 studies were screened with eight publications providing data on 121 dogs ultimately included. The most common treatments were surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy in 83/121 (69%) dogs; combined surgery, radiation and chemotherapy in 17/121 (14%) dogs; chemotherapy alone in 12/121 (10%) dogs and surgery alone in 7/121 (6%) dogs. Dogs with distant metastasis (n = 22) experienced significantly shorter survival compared with those with regional lymph node (RLN) metastasis (n = 99; median 194 vs 637 days; P < .01). Two variables were significantly associated with increased risk of death: presence of distant (vs RLN) metastasis (hazard ratio = 2.60; P < .01) and not receiving surgery as a component of treatment (hazard ratio = 3.79; P < .01). Risk of bias was judged to be low in terms of selection and performance bias but high in terms of detection and exclusion bias. In conclusion, dogs with cMCT and RLN metastasis can be expected to live significantly longer than those with distant metastasis, and surgery appears to have a role in extending survival of metastatic low-grade cMCT.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32103587/