How reliable is the VDI-TK test for cat lymphoma? False results?

FeLV is a non-curable disease which means that once your cat has it he will carry the virus for the duration of his life. I am not sure which SNAP test was used on Tom, but the IDEXX FeLV/FIV SNAP has a sensitivity of 98.6% and a Specificity of 98.2% for FeLV. This means that there is only a 1.8% chance of a false positive on the SNAP. However, it is important to note that cats who have been vaccinated for FeLV can show a positive result on the SNAP. IDEXX recommends that any positive FeLV SNAP be confirmed by IFA. Although there are no statistics shown for discrepant results, they do recommend repeat testing after 28 days rather than euthanasia: http://www.idexx.com.tw/pdf/zh_tw/smallanimal/snap/triple/fiv-felv-diagnostic-guidelines.pdf

I am sorry belvedeer was positive for feline leukemia. The test is very reliable and most likely if he tested positive he does truly have the disease. However if he is really young you can re test him at 6 months of age. At this time all the maternal antibodies will be gone from the kittens body. I would recommend retesting at 6 months. If Belvedeer is over 6 months than the test could always be repeated in 2-3 weeks just to double check and make sure the test did not make a false positive.

Panleukopenia is a feline parvovirus. They don't make a direct test for it but most clinics use the canine parvovirus test to get a result. False positives are very rare, occurring only in about 0-6% of tested samples. Vaccine induced positives are also rare with about only 1/64 recently vaccinated kittens testing positive. This is with the IDEXX brand test. Other brands had a higher rate of positive results following vaccination. So, without more information as to what test your vet used and how long ago she was vaccinated and with what vaccine (if she was even vaccinated) it is difficult for me to say much on the subject. If an IDEXX test was used I would trust the result. Hope this helps. Best wishes.

a blood smear is quite reliable but i would still recommend having an additional blood test (Elisa, IFA or PCR) to have a confirmation. unfortunately the disease is not curable but it is manageable and many cats can live many years with the disease.

Oh dear, I'm sorry to hear that Stassi has been diagnosed with lymphoma. If Stassi and all of your other cats have been indoors only, and were all negative for FeLV to start with, there is next to no chance that your other cats have contracted or will contract FeLV. It is statistically improbable that Stassi has tested negative for FeLV four times and would still have FeLV, unless she may have been exposed to another cat in the past 4-5 years that has FeLV. Lymphoma is a fairly common type of cancer that can occur in cats with or without FeLV. I hope that helps to clarify your concerns. I'm really sorry that you and Stassi are going through this situation.

These are great questions. Contrary to popular belief, most cancer patients in veterinary medicine have completely unremarkable bloodwork. Just because there are many extra lymphocytes in the walls of the intestines, does not mean there are extra lymphocytes in the blood stream - where our sample comes from. We can be suspicious of it from an ultrasound but cannot truly diagnose it without the biopsy. As for the second part, small cell lymphoma is a disease that affects large sections of or almost the entire small bowel. It is not a single mass that can be removed. Luckily for you, small cell lymphoma responds well to chemotherapy in most cases. Best wishes to you and Trixie.

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! That statement is true for the most part. There are more factors that play a role when it comes to ymphoma such as the morphology of the cells and their molecular characteristics. Now it is true that most of the lymphomas affecting the gastrointestinal tract in cats are T-cell. However, we do see T-cell lymphoma affecting other locations. The small cell type of gastrointestinal lymphoma does not tend to affect the kidneys at all while the large cell type can affect the kidney in about a third of the patients. I hope this is useful. To give you more specific information I would need to know more specifics on the case. Feel free to request a consultation with me if you have further questions such as best treatment options and how to manage these cases. I see these cases very commonly as I only see cancer cases. Good luck!