Otis is a very fortunate golden retriever who was in his golden years when bone cancer pain threatened to shorten his life. His family was worried — nobody wants to watch their beloved family pet suffer. But a promising new therapy Otis was given as a participant in a clinical trial aimed at pet dogs has helped Otis lengthen his life, thanks to a local company named Advanced Targeting Systems (ATS).
Otis’s brain no longer knows it is in pain from the cancer, but he can still feel normal acute pain — for example, if he bumps his head or has a cut or bruise, he’ll feel it and if needed, can be treated with traditional pain care. His growing tumor doesn’t seem to bother him.
Bone cancer at advanced stages often leads to animals being euthanized because it is causes a great amount of pain. ATS believes that there are better options, and pain shouldn’t have to be a life-threatening disease for your pet. They created SP-SAP to prevent chronic pain signals from reaching the brain.
ATS’s results were published in the November 2013 issue of the journal Anesthesiology, finding that pet dogs receiving SP-SAP displayed significantly less pain than dogs receiving traditional pain care, with no visible side effects and an improved quality of life.
ATS now hopes to perform similar clinical research trials with human subjects.
What a great story. That’s so great for Otis. He is such a beautiful dog. It’s amazing how big the tumor gets as the weeks go by. I’m glad that he doesn’t seem to feel pain. It would be wonderful if they could come up with a treatment like this for humans. Bone cancer is probably one of the most painful, if not the the most painful, form of cancer there is.
It would be great if they could further test this out and use it for both pets and the owners. Cancer is scary no matter who gets it, or what type it is. Removing pain from it is only half the battle but half is always better than doing nothing at all.
This is such an amazing story. It’s a proud moment when the medical field comes up with a way to cope with disease. Now they need to take what they have learned and apply it to humans and hopefully some day soon they will have invented cures for all types of cancers.
That is such a great story. The fact that this could help other pets and even people is also amazing! I’m going to have to do some research and see what comes from this in the future.