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which_chickAs you know, Bob, I put my mare Nick down at the end of September last year. We were at the Ebensburg Potato Festival and Trys got a call from the vet's office regarding the bloodwork for Nick. The vet said the bloodwork was strongly indicative of cancer, so we put the mare down the next day.
I got the bloodwork papers from Trys the other day because I was riding in her car. There were two... a DRI-CHEM and a ElementHT5_1, whatever those are. You don't get anything that says, like CANCER. You get some things and a Low/OK/High dot showing where you are in the range.
On the ElementHT5_1 stuff, the out-of-normal things were as follows:
HGB 9.1 (L)
HCT 27.7 (L)
MCV 49.4 (L)
MCH 16.3 (L)
RDW% 22.1 (H)
On the DRI-CHEM, the non-normal things were
Calcium 12.1 (almost H)
Corrected Ca 13.3 (H)
Total Protein 9.2 (H)
Albumin 2.3 (L)
Globulin 6.9 (H)
GGT 22 (H)
Do these things mean cancer? Well...
What we have here is a 20 yr old mare presenting with persistent and continual weight loss, lack of appetite, lack of fever, no snot, no cough, fairly significant apathy about life. She is Failing To Thrive in a big way. So something is really wrong with her.
The lack of fever, snot, and cough suggest that this problem is not bacterial or viral in nature. Whatever is wrong, it's something else besides a bacteria or a virus.
"Sometimes the paraneoplastic manifestation is the most important and earliest sign of cancer," he explained. "For example, we often see an older horse that is weak, inappetant, and losing weight as a result of the cancer, but there is no sign of that cancer on physical examination.
"So the veterinarian might run routine blood work and notice an elevated blood calcium concentration. This abnormality, called hypercalcemia, has several possible causes, one of which is a paraneoplastic manifestation of underlying cancer."
Source
So yeah. Bloodwork is indicative of cancer when combined with lack of appetite, weakness, and ongoing otherwise unexplained weight loss in an older horse.
I got the bloodwork papers from Trys the other day because I was riding in her car. There were two... a DRI-CHEM and a ElementHT5_1, whatever those are. You don't get anything that says, like CANCER. You get some things and a Low/OK/High dot showing where you are in the range.
On the ElementHT5_1 stuff, the out-of-normal things were as follows:
HGB 9.1 (L)
HCT 27.7 (L)
MCV 49.4 (L)
MCH 16.3 (L)
RDW% 22.1 (H)
On the DRI-CHEM, the non-normal things were
Calcium 12.1 (almost H)
Corrected Ca 13.3 (H)
Total Protein 9.2 (H)
Albumin 2.3 (L)
Globulin 6.9 (H)
GGT 22 (H)
Do these things mean cancer? Well...
What we have here is a 20 yr old mare presenting with persistent and continual weight loss, lack of appetite, lack of fever, no snot, no cough, fairly significant apathy about life. She is Failing To Thrive in a big way. So something is really wrong with her.
The lack of fever, snot, and cough suggest that this problem is not bacterial or viral in nature. Whatever is wrong, it's something else besides a bacteria or a virus.
"Sometimes the paraneoplastic manifestation is the most important and earliest sign of cancer," he explained. "For example, we often see an older horse that is weak, inappetant, and losing weight as a result of the cancer, but there is no sign of that cancer on physical examination.
"So the veterinarian might run routine blood work and notice an elevated blood calcium concentration. This abnormality, called hypercalcemia, has several possible causes, one of which is a paraneoplastic manifestation of underlying cancer."
Source
So yeah. Bloodwork is indicative of cancer when combined with lack of appetite, weakness, and ongoing otherwise unexplained weight loss in an older horse.
