Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Pain relief during surgery affects survival in dogs with bone cancer
By Nolan, Michael W et al.·Published in Veterinary and comparative oncology·2022·Department of Clinical Sciences, United States·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Intensity of perioperative analgesia but not pre-treatment pain is predictive of survival in dogs undergoing amputation plus chemotherapy for extremity osteosarcoma.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of dogs with localized osteosarcoma (a type of bone cancer) underwent limb amputation and chemotherapy to treat their condition. Researchers found that the level of pain the dogs had before surgery did not affect their survival, but the type of pain management they received during and after surgery did. Dogs that received a strong pain relief plan, including a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) and a special catheter for delivering pain medication, lived longer than those who had less effective pain management. On average, dogs with high-intensity pain relief survived about 378 days, compared to 252 days for those with low-intensity pain relief.
People also search for: dog osteosarcoma treatment · dog amputation pain management · dog chemotherapy survival rates
Abstract
The purpose of this bi-institutional retrospective study was to determine whether, in dogs treated with limb amputation and adjunctive chemotherapy for osteosarcoma, oncologic outcomes are impacted by either: (1) baseline cancer pain severity, or (2) the approaches used for perioperative pain management. Data were extracted from the medical records of 284 dogs that underwent both limb amputation and chemotherapy (carboplatin and/or doxorubicin) between 1997 and 2017 for localized (non-metastatic) osteosarcoma of the appendicular skeleton. Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox proportional hazard (PH) models were used to determine the impact that retrospectively scored baseline pain levels (high vs. low) and various analgesic and local anaesthetic treatments had on both metastasis-free survival and all-cause mortality. For the entire population, the median disease free interval and median overall survival times were 253 and 284 days, respectively. Baseline pain was rated as "low" in 84 dogs, and "high" in 190 dogs; pain severity had no detectable effect on either metastasis-free survival or all-cause mortality. When accounting for the potential influences of known prognostic factors, dogs treated with what was characterized as a high-intensity perioperative analgesic plan (including both a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug [NSAID] and a bupivacaine-eluting soaker catheter placed at the amputation site) had a higher probability of survival than dogs treated with a low-intensity perioperative analgesic plan (neither an NSAID, nor a soaker catheter); the median overall survival times were 252 and 378 days, respectively (hazard ratio: 2.922; p = .020).
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35257492/