Re: Lola's tentative pheo diagnosis
Originally Posted by
Erika L.
One question for those who have lived with pheos. The doc has me on the lookout for symptomatic behavior (ravenously hungry or thirsty, lethargic, etc.). Since Lola is an English Bulldog she is always extremely hungry or thirsty and has a tendency to fluctuate between lethargic and ridiculously hyper (which causes her to pant a lot). When I mentioned this to the vet she told me, "You are looking for behaviors that are uncharacteristic for her. You'll know them when you see them."
Hi Erika - if you go back to the first page of Flynn's thread I go over the symptoms he had when first diagnosed http://www.k9cushings.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4242
I had written.... "Flynn had nondescript symptoms that included weight gain we thought because of his ravenous appetite so put him on a diet, less energy, panting when stressed ie if we were eating, lipomas removed a year prior but mainly all back again, pot belly, shaky like a lot of foxies and he has always done this but it is much more pronounced, not so good at jumping"
Another big one for him was hypertension, caused by the cathecholoamines like adrenaline that the pheo secretes. They can do this even when they are teeny tiny which made his diagnosis difficult, he had four scans including a CT before they finally found it and in that year to 18 months it had grown into his vena cava. Don't worry too much about it being on the right, our surgeon said that while it is a bit more fiddly to get to the right side and remove, it did not impact on mortality in the cases he had done
I had a google on that UC Davis study you mentioned that was published last year and wonder if this is the one, Dr Feldman who is known here by a few of the members is one of the authors: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...vim.12027/full it will be interesting to hear back from your vets if this is the blood test they are used. The full study is available to read, but it is a fairly heavy going . But interesting nonetheless! Plus it is great to see more studies coming out that will help with diagnosis of adrenal tumours. I saw it was first presented at a veterinary conference in 2006, so the info has been around a while but it still does not seem to be routinely used by specialist vets and I wonder if it is because of the small numbers in the study.
Stop worrying about what can go wrong and start getting excited about what can go right!