My cat's on steroids for 8 months. How do I safely stop them?

Given her age, steroid side effects from long term use tend to become less of a risk if the benefits are clearly improving her quality of life. Depending on the nature of the growth, low level chemotherapy medications may provide an opportunity to halt growth or even reduce the mass but this would require assessment by a specialist

Is there a reason you want to stop the prednisone? I would recommend not stopping it and if you feel it is better to stop the prednisone then I would recommend weaning off of the prednisone. I would discuss how to wean the prednisone with your veterinarian. Thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center.

I do not recommend giving any pets any human medications without specific instructions from your vet. Steroids have to be given carefully in order to obtain the correct therapeutic effect and they must be weaned off it when finishing a course. This is a discussion best handled by your veterinarian.

It depends how long he was on it. If he was on it for less than a week, you can stop it cold turkey. If it was longer than that, you can respectfully tell the vet that you are concerned about iatrogenic (meaning medical treatment caused the issue) Addison's disease (underactive adrenal gland). Thanks for asking Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach!

In general, steroids need to be slowly decreased over time and are generally not supposed to be stopped abruptly although it is not always detrimental (it depends on the dose/length of time pets are on them). I recommend to call your veterinarian first thing tomorrow morning. They can look at the dose and decide if Diesel should be placed back on a lower dose or if it is ok to not start them again. You should also have your vet mark that he may be sensitive to steroids so they should be lowered for him if used at all. I hope this helps.

Cats are normally very resistant to the side effects of Prednisone, so the signs you are describing are very usual to see in cats. Was Elliot started on any other medications that may be causing these symptoms? I would definitely discuss any changes in his Prednisone dosing with his veterinarian. Sometimes we can get away with lower doses, but need to decrease the amounts carefully. We normally do not recommend decreasing the amount by more than 50% at a time, so decreasing from 1 mL twice daily to 0.5 mL once daily would be decreasing the dose by four times, which might be too extreme for Elliot (even after only 6 days on the steroid). The good news is that we do not tend to see heart problems with oral steroids (only injectible steroids), so you do not need to worry about heart problems with oral steroids. I hope that answered your question. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

It would help to know what medical condition she is taking the steroid for - if she has a life-threatening auto-immune disease, for example, then I would definitely not want to skip any doses since this could cause a relapse of her disease. But if she is taking the steroid for allergies or some other condition that is not as serious, then it would probably not cause any harm if she misses a dose or two - you might see some recurrence of her symptoms, but this would not seriously jeopardize her health. It would also help to know specifically what steroid she was taking (prednisolone, dexamethasone, etc) since different medications stay in the system longer than others. If you want to post again with more details, we can try to give a more specific answer.