Cat sarcoma costs and prognosis

[FrenchFancie]

I’ve been to the vet with my 7 1/2 year old neutered boy cat who has a lump come up quickly on his chest - I assumed it was a cyst. Vet has told me that it’s actually a sarcoma, he’s done a needle biopsy today to check and figure out how aggressive it is.

i have to confess i kinda went into shock and didn’t listen to all the information given…..

has anyone got experience (good or bad) of this condition and can give me stories of outcomes etc? Also can anyone tell me the rough cost of treatment? I’m going to speak to the vet again on Saturday but I could really do with ballpark figures. For various stupid reasons he’s not insured, so we will have to pay for any treatment. We can cover it - it’s our stupid fault he’s not insured - but I’m just trying to figure out how bad the damage to our savings will be….

thanks in advance….

Bumping for you. No advice, but I'm
Not sure I'd ever want to treat cancer in a cat. I think I'd go down the palliative route.

Unfortunately the prognosis depends on the lump and how badly it's spread and grown.

You could be lucky and the vet can remove it but unfortunately for many cats it's a case of prolonging the inevitable so you may be looking at palliative care.

My cat had a lump removed when he was about that age. The word sarcoma wasn’t mentioned but it was cancerous. He wasn’t insured so we paid and I think it was about £300 but that was about ten years ago. (He lived until 17.)
I hope your boy recovers well.

My 10 year old boy developed a sarcoma on his back - we went through all treatment options with the vet and decided on removal and medication. Prognosis very much depended on how much of the cancer they could remove once they got in and how quickly it returned but they were up front that it could be very short.

They removed everything, he had a year clear then the lump returned. We removed again but the lump returned after about 4 months. We decided against further surgery , and he lived a further 6. It was only in his last week you could tell there was an issue with the lump affecting his mobility and we were quick to get him pts when that happened.

All in he lived 20 months with two surgeries and medication and had a good quality of life till the end.

Cost wise we were around 3.5k in total, that was spread between the surgeries and daily meds. On the vets advice we declined radiotherapy due to the toll it would take on our boy, but we were told cost wise we’d be looking at an additional £4k plus if that was the route we wanted to take.

Thanks for the replies - we’ve gone for a one- off lump removal, which seems to have gone well. We’re not doing medication as he’s a bigger to get tablets into and gets stressed quickly. We’ve decided that we want the best quality of life for what he has left without messing him about or having him in pain.

Paws crossed for both of you OP