Long-term disease-free survival in a dog with appendicular osteosarcoma

Postoperative prognosis is generally poor even with adjuvant chemotherapy in dogs with an appendicular osteosarcoma. The purpose of this report was to present the long-term disease-free survival time in a dog with appendicular osteosarcoma receiving amputation,adjuvant chemotherapy and adoptive immunotherapy. A 12-year-old spayed Golden retriever was referred to our hospital with a suspicion of osteosarcoma in right distal radius. The patient underwent the computed tomography (CT) and incisional biopsy on the next day after the first presentation. The CT revealed the osteolysis in the right distal radius and no metastases in the lungs and lymph nodes. The histopathologic diagnosis was made as an osteosarcoma. On the 13th day after,the patient underwent right forelimb amputation. Six doses of carboplatin (250 mg / m2) were postoperatively administered every 3 weeks. The intravenous infusion of lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells suspension was performed every 3 ~ 4 weeks after the adjuvant chemotherapy. At the time of our writing this abstract (on the 880thday after the first presentation),no recurrences and metastases were observed after the 32 transfers of LAK cells. In canine appendicular osteosarcoma,some reports have described that postoperative median survival times were 235 ~ 540 d with adjuvant chemotherapy. In our report,the disease free interval and survival time were prolonged compared with the previous reports. We strongly believed that early diagnosis and surgical intervention and adoptive immunotherapy had a great impact on the improvement of survival time in canine appendicular osteosarcoma.