moondiamond
Savannah Super Cat
Thanks Patti and Brigitte for your input.
I was feeling the same way; the terminology sounded a bit contradictory to me. I called the vet a second time yesterday for clarification. The way he explained it to me was that cancers can behave in a benign way, in that some types do not spread or metastasize interally. I worked in human medicine (different from veterinary, yes) for almost a decade; we dealt with a lot of types of cancers and they weren't ever described as being benign, even if they were only relatively harmless local lesions of the type that did not spread internally or metastasize. So herein lies my confusion.
His description of the mass itself was a low-grade soft tissue sarcoma and he added "these masses are benign in cats". The actual pathology report showed that it came back as a peripheral nerve sheath tumor - he said the human equivalent would be something called a 'Schwannoma' tumour, which is a benign tumor.
I was feeling the same way; the terminology sounded a bit contradictory to me. I called the vet a second time yesterday for clarification. The way he explained it to me was that cancers can behave in a benign way, in that some types do not spread or metastasize interally. I worked in human medicine (different from veterinary, yes) for almost a decade; we dealt with a lot of types of cancers and they weren't ever described as being benign, even if they were only relatively harmless local lesions of the type that did not spread internally or metastasize. So herein lies my confusion.
His description of the mass itself was a low-grade soft tissue sarcoma and he added "these masses are benign in cats". The actual pathology report showed that it came back as a peripheral nerve sheath tumor - he said the human equivalent would be something called a 'Schwannoma' tumour, which is a benign tumor.
