Hope for Hemangiosarcoma -Biology Based Treatment Options

Hemangiosarcoma (HSA) is a tumor with which most veterinary practitioners are well familiar. For most dogs, the diagnosis of HSA is a harbinger of bad things to come; most veterinarians consider this tumor to be the "kiss of death". Improvements in diagnosis and therapy of HSA have been slowly emerging, and new therapeutic opportunities are on the horizon. All HSA are highly malignant neoplasms. Most primary HSA lesions arise in the spleen, liver, right atrium or subcutaneous tissues. Approximately 25% of cases have concurrent right atrial and splenic involvement at the time of diagnosis. Regardless of the site of origin, local infiltration and systemic metastases are the common growth patterns. Some investigators have suggested that the skin and subcutaneous sites are less aggressive but metastatic behavior from these locations has been observed. True intradermal HSA can arise in non-pigmented, non-haired skin of dogs and cats as a result of chronic ultraviolet light exposure. These lesions may behave in a more benign manner, as compared to lesions that arise at deep tissue locations that are non-actinic in etiopathogenesis.