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Oncology Services
What Does Oncology Do?
Oncology is the specialty that helps diagnose and treat animals with neoplasia, or cancer. Cancer becomes unfortunately common as many animals age, and sometimes it can be difficult to determine that it is causing an animal's symptoms with some specialized training. Our oncology team at AHSC uses a variety of in house and outside laboratory tests to determine not only if a patient has a neoplastic growth, but where it is, what type of growth it is, how malignant or aggressive it is, and how it can be best treated.
Dr. Marie Janson, formerly Dr. Marie Mullins, has been practicing oncology and helping animals with cancer live better lives at AHSC for a number of years. You can usually pick out the oncology patients coming to see Dr. Janson in our waiting room; they are often the one with wagging tails and smiling owners.
Continue reading more below about our oncology services or follow the link above to learn more about Dr. Janson.
The Role of a Veterinary Oncologist
While veterinary oncology services have borrowed a great deal from human medicine, they are distinctly different in many aspects. With many human patients, the goal of oncology services is to cure them of their disease. This involves very large doses of chemotherapy and thus can lead to some very unwanted side effects. Veterinary oncologists cannot explain this to their patients. Thus, they take a much gentler approach to treatment to help them into a remission for as long as possible so that they can go back to enjoying life.
As with human medicine, veterinary oncology can utilize surgery, chemotherapy and other type of medical therapy such as pain management to ensure that patients with cancer enjoy the best possible quality of life for their situation. Many times animals can surprise us with their endurance, even in the face of overwhelming odds.
Dr. Janson is our board certified oncologist and is constantly keeping on top of the latest chemotherapy and treatment protocols. She has an enormous amount of information about the research that has been done with animals and the trials that are currently underway to find new treatment cures.