Are my dog's tummy issues IBD, kidney disease, or GI cancer?

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!

The symptoms do overlap for all of these disorders. Most have vomiting and diarrhea and the appetite is variable. In advanced cancer or gastritis they are anorexic but early on can still have an appetite. An ultrasound is a good way to distinguish cancer and IBD from gastritis though. However IBD and cancer have thickened intestines and are hard to distinguish unless there is an intestinal biopsy obtained.

I am sorry to hear about Tyson. The two main rule outs we would have in his case would be inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and cancer of the intestinal tract (such as GI lymphoma). Unfortunately it is impossible to tell which of these is present without additional testing. The next step would be an ultrasound of the abdomen. It is possible they may find changes supportive of one disease or the other, but it is also possible the changes might not differentiate the two and a biopsy may be needed. The question you need to ask yourself is if your dog did have cancer, would you pursue aggressive treatment (i.e. surgery and chemotherapy). If the answer is no, then it might be worth trying to treat him as if he has IBD to see if there is any improvement. This treatment usually involves a diet change and putting the dog on a steroid such as prednisone. Often dogs with cancer will temporarily improve on prednisone as well. Here is an article with a little info on this: http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Content.plx?P=A&S=0&C=0&A=598 .

Hello, and thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. I'm sorry to hear about Portifoy's diarrhea troubles! It's not clear from the history what sort of duration we're talking about, but it can take time (sometimes weeks) to get IBD symptoms under control. Many cats improve much faster if put on a tapering dose of steroids (often prednisolone is used), so you could talk to your vet about this. Depending on what diagnostics were performed that led to the IBD diagnosis, those symptoms could indicate IBD, but could also be consistent with a food sensitivity/allergy, or GI lymphoma, among other things. An abdominal ultrasound helps with a diagnosis, if that hasn't been done, with a GI biopsy being the ideal diagnostic (although that's also quite invasive, and your vet can help you decide if it's worth the risk). At this point, I'd recommend communicating with your vet and letting them know how Port's doing, as they may have been hoping his symptoms would improve with the medications you mentioned - but they may want to change things (such as adding a steroid, or discussing the next diagnostic step) once they know he's still having diarrhea. Feel free to request a consultation if you'd like to discuss Port's case in more detail. I hope this helps!

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! This probably just means that her IBD is no longer being controlled on the current medications and she just needs further management of her condition. I highly recommend that you have reevaluated by a veterinarian for further assessment. At the very least they can make sure to treat her symptoms so that you can get her to feel better. They can also add medications to try to get her condition under control again. Good luck!

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! He is adorable! I think that a course of prednisone could potentially be added to better control the IBD so it has an all day effect. Another thing that can be tried if your veterinarian (who knows all his medical history) thinks is a good idea is changing him to another IBD type diet such as Royal canin ultamino. This diet has proven to be very effective for both IBD and skin allergies. Good luck and have a great day!

Thanks for your question. Yes, dogs can get colitis or ulcerative colitis. Chrohns Disease is a human term, so we do not use that in dogs. These problems can cause profuse chronic diarrhea that may contain blood. Cancer and IBD are hard to differentiate without more advanced diagnostics like a biopsy. Dogs can get colitis from infectious causes - giardia, worms, viruses, or food intolerance. Some dogs with chronic diarrhea do better in higher fiber foods. There are causes of diarrhea that can be easily treated, and some that are more difficult to treat. I hope that answers your question.