Exploring the latest findings on mast cell tumors

Insured pets are 5 times more likely to be diagnosed with a mast cell tumor, Philip Bergman, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVIM, explained in an interview with dvm360 earlier this fall during the Fetch dvm360 conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey. At the conference, Bergman presented the lecture “Mast Cell Tumors: The Latest and Greatest,” where he talked all about mast cell tumors. During his session, he covered controversial topics relating to these tumors, treatment protocols—including new therapeutics, and more. Watch this interview clip to learn more about Bergman’s lecture.

Below is the interview transcript:

Philip Bergman, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVIM: We sit down and talk about some of the newer, newer literature related to risk. And one of the things that comes out is that if your pet is insured, there's a 5-time greater chance that [they’re] going to be diagnosed with a mast cell. So, it's not that the insurance caused it, it's that the insurance allowed us to have a client that could afford doing the appropriate tests to then prove that it was a mast cell. We then will sit down and talk about ‘what's an appropriate amount of staging or looking for spread in our patients?’ because that's an area of controversy currently in my world.

Then we sit down and talk a lot about some of the treatment protocols that are out there, when it's Palladia indicated, and then a very cool new therapeutic that's an intralesional treatment called Stelfonta, which is FDA approved for dogs with mast cell. We actually sit down and talk about the indications, and when you can get into trouble with that drug. And so really, it's an eye towards, you know, ‘what are the latest and greatest things that are becoming available to us?’