Researchers in the US have discovered that dogs with meningiomas—the most common type of brain tumour in dogs—live longer if they receive radiation therapy rather than surgery.
With collaborators at clinics in the US, UK and Japan, the researchers at Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences compared the treatment records of 285 pet dogs with meningiomas and found that the average post-treatment survival rate for radiation therapy was just under two years, while surgery provided an average of about 10 months.
The work is published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine.
“Whether to perform surgery or radiation for this type of cancer in dogs has been a big question for a number of years,” Dr Nick Jeffery said.
“It’s too expensive for most dog owners to do both treatments, so knowing which to recommend as the veterinarian is crucial for the patient’s survival and wellbeing.”
While radiation treatment for meningiomas can entail several trips to a specialty clinic, most dogs are only minimally affected by the procedure and show few symptoms after treatment.
“Radiation therapy is very targeted toward the part of the brain affected by the tumour, so it tends to be applied in a small area,” Dr Jeffery said.
“This typically leads to a more complete removal of the tumour as well as fewer complications later on. For example, there is a post-operative risk of pneumonia that comes with brain surgery in dogs, and radiation avoids that risk.”
The application of a statistical technique called inverse-probability weighting estimation allowed Dr Jeffery and his colleagues to compare clinical cases.
“The ideal method to compare outcomes between different treatments is a randomised controlled trial,” Dr Jeffery said.
“But there are many practical obstacles—largely to do with high costs—to doing such a trial for this disease in dogs.
“The statistical method means we can analyse pre-existing data and take into account various other factors that might influence treatment choices and outcomes to provide a summary comparison of survival after treatment.”
