Mast Cell Tumors and Stelfonta

[treebeard]

My little pug Fleur has a mast cell tumor condition. I adopted her in 2023 and she’d had one surgery (done by the spca who took her in) to remove existing tumors and she had two other surgeries for the tumors since then.

I’ve found a new tumor on her and have an appointment Friday with my vet clinic to have it biopsied and to talk about options.

My wonderful vet has briefly spoken of Stelfonta as an option other than surgery. I’ve read up on it but I wondered if anyone on the forum has experience with Stelfonta and their dog(s). Naturally I will be discussing options at length with my vet.

Stelfonta is an injection that kills the tumor off, creating an open wound, which then heals.

Here is Fleur. She’s 8 years old.

[treebeard]

I think it’s good that no one has experience with Stelfonta and mast cell tumors.

It’s not a fun ride to deal with them growing every four to six months.

[Simkie]

Is the new tumor in a place when surgery isn’t really possible? Looking at the product literature, that seems to be a requirement. I’d not be real keen on using something that creates an open wound that then needs to heal, rather than just sending to surgery and managing a line of stitches, unless surgery really is untenable.

This stuff wasn’t available when my mast cell dog was alive. But one very weird thing that really did help her was cutting chicken out of her diet. When she was on a non chicken diet, we had no new tumors, then she started growing them again when I moved her back to chicken. Stopped again once we switched back. It was super odd, but whatever, I was happy to nix the chicken!

[treebeard]

This tumor is on her neck where all the pug wrinkles are. I have also been concerned about the open wound issue. Fleur has had so many surgeries that it just concerns me that here comes another one, and my vet offered Stelfonta as a possibility.

We see him today.

That’s interesting about the chicken! Fleur doesn’t have that in her diet but it sure is interesting that your dog responded in that way with that in her meals.