Exocrine pancreatic cancer in dogs is rare, however, it may appear.
Pancreas is an important digestive organ that secrets digestive hormone.
This kind of cancer is of epithelial in origin and spreads through the body and to other organs during the time of diagnosis.
Symptoms Symptoms of pancreatic cancer in dogs are quite vague and unclear.
Some common symptoms include, loss of body weight, hair loss or too much shedding, anorexia, tendency of vomiting, and abdominal pressure distension because of mass effect.
This cancer may produce severe pain in belly.
Diagnosis This cancer is also difficult to detect since most blood serum evaluation (blood test) and bio chemical interpretation could be most non specific.
Also the sample evaluations of the enzymes secreted by the pancreatic glad are non- consistent and give little or no indication of cancer infection.
The tumors are not always detected upon physical examination.
The pancreatic tumor could be identified by abdominal ultrasound that is a localized medical apparatus.
It is also used to find out if the cancer has metastasized to other organs like liver and regional lymph.
Advanced imaging machine such as CT scan, and MRI scanner can be also important tools to identify pancreatic cancer, however, they are not currently so widespread in use.
Treatment The prime difficulty is that pancreatic cancer in dogs spreads quickly to other organs like liver and regional lymph even on the onset.
If it is found spread then surgical option would not work properly because It is now highly risky operation because of its steep morbidity and mortality rate and without any real benefit.
A gastrointestinal bypass surgery can be done if the bowel can be hindered when the tumor spreads, but it will only be a short time relief just to minimize the severity of the disease.
Prognosis The prognosis of pancreatic cancer in dogs is very poor due to its critical position.