Treatment with DAV for Advanced-Stage Hemangiosarcoma in Dogs

Abstract

Hemangiosarcoma (HSA) is an aggressive disease that is fairly common in the dog. The authors evaluated a doxorubicin, dacarbazine, and vincristine (DAV) combination protocol in dogs with nonresectable stage II and stage III HSA. Twenty-four dogs were enrolled in this prospective, phase 2 study. Doxorubicin and dacarbazine were administered on day 1 while vincristine was administered on days 8 and 15. The protocol was repeated every 21 days for a maximum of six cycles or until disease progression. Toxicity and efficacy were assessed by clinical and laboratory evaluation and by questionnaires completed by the owners. Of the 24 included dogs, 19 were evaluable for response. The response rate (including five complete responses and four partial responses) was 47.4%. Median time to tumor progression was 101 days and median overall survival was 125 days.Significant toxicities were noted, including 41 high-grade hematologic and 12 high-grade gastrointestinal toxic events.

A retrospective analysis of chemotherapy switch suggests improved outcome in surgically removed, biologically aggressive canine haemangiosarcoma

“…Limitations of this study include its retrospective nature, the low number of cases, the different tumour site origin, the variability of chemotherapy protocols used in the MTDC phase and the lack of necropsies. Five dogs received a combination of doxorubicin and dacarbazine, which has recently demonstrated encouraging results providing an increase in the chances of survival for biologically aggressive canine HSA . Nevertheless, in the present series dogs receiving doxorubicin and dacarbazine were equally distributed among groups, thereby rendering unlikely the chance of having improved outcome in one group only.…”

Survival time of dogs with splenic hemangiosarcoma treated by splenectomy with or without adjuvant chemotherapy: 208 cases (2001–2012)

“…Several studies [6][7][8]10,[12][13][14][15][16][17] have reported that survival times for dogs receiving doxorubicin-based chemotherapy appear to be longer than historical survival times reported for patients treated with surgery alone. 5 Additional evidence for the efficacy of doxorubicin-based protocols has been provided by studies 16,18,19 demonstrating complete or partial responses in dogs with unresectable primary hemangiosarcoma masses or measurable hemangiosarcoma metastases. 5 Additional evidence for the efficacy of doxorubicin-based protocols has been provided by studies 16,18,19 demonstrating complete or partial responses in dogs with unresectable primary hemangiosarcoma masses or measurable hemangiosarcoma metastases.…”

Epidemiological, Clinical and Pathological Features of Primary Cardiac Hemangiosarcoma in Dogs: A Review of 51 Cases

“…Chemotherapy in an adjuvant setting has been evaluated in various clinical studies of dogs with HSA and has shown promise for prolonging life after surgical resection of the primary HSA lesion [8, 18, 21, 31]. Doxorubicin-based protocols reportedly have moderate efficacy for dogs with HSA, whereas protocols that do not include doxorubicin have had limited or no efficacy [30].…”

“…Primary HSA can develop in any vascularized site in the body, but the most frequent sites of origin include the spleen, right atrium and auricle, subcutaneous tissues and liver [4, 8, 14, 33]. This tumor metastasizes easily to distant organs via hematogenous routes, because it has ready access to the systemic circulation, the lungs being the most frequently affected site [23, 29].…”