Annual Wellness & Cancer

Cancer is a major cause of pet animal death. I say this based on a study that looked into more than 2000 necropsy cases. This study found that 45% of dogs that lived 10 years or older died of cancer (1). Of the more than 70 million household dogs and  90 million cats in the United States, at least 4 million dogs and about 4 million of cats develop cancer each year.

Why should you (a pet owner) and your veterinarian be concerned about cancer? The prevalence of cancer continues to rise in the US pet population. It continually rises due to several factors, but mainly because our pets are living increasingly longer lives. And they are living longer thanks to the advances in veterinary medicine for better nutrition (read my articles on Pet Foods), vaccinations against deadly viral and bacterial diseases, better preventive medicine (heartworm, tick-borne diseases, parasites) and possibly due to the increased bond between pets and their owners (human-animal bond).

I contend that ethical veterinarians will educate their clients about the need for at least one wellness appointment every year to make sure your pet is doing OK. Remember, they age a lot faster than humans, and a small decline in health could translate into a significantly shorter life-span. During a wellness visit your vet will check for signs of anemia, feel the lymph nodes, check for lumps, and palpate the abdomen in an attempt to feel the liver, loops of the intestines, spleen and kidneys to ascertain their size, texture and if there are possibly masses present in the abdomen.

During a wellness visit, I feel it is important to educate my clients as to the benefit of doing blood work. This is  particularly true for pets 7 years of age and older. I believe that the cost of missing a significant yet insidiously developing disease is too great to justify NOT testing just to save a couple hundred dollars. Blood work will also allow your vet to record baseline values for your pet. The best reference range for a particular pet are the laboratory values for that pet when he/she is healthy! Furthermore, once your vet obtains baseline values for your pet's current health status, serial data collection and evaluation provides the best objective way to assess how a disease is progressing.

And to those who believe that vets who consistently educate their clients about the supreme importance of yearly wellness exams and screening tests do so to increase their income, I strongly object! My own pets are placed on yearly screening tests (especially my senior pets); I believe it is poor medicine not to alert my clients to the fact that the older a pet grows, the more likely he/she will start brewing potentially serious health issues. This is true for obesity, metabolic/inflammatory disorders, organ failure (kidney, liver) and, sadly enough, the number one pet killer in the US: cancer.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word prevention as "to anticipate", "to see it coming and ward off".  A $50 wellness appointment together with $200 for a complete health screening may help prevent a potentially painful & expensive situation for you and your pet. Isn't your pet worth much more than $250 per year? Think about it!

1. Bronson RT. Variation in age at death of dogs of different sexes and breeds. American Journal of Veterinary Research. 43:2057-2059, 1982