Stories: Tulli Breen

Tulli is now a happy & healthy 15 year old Golden Retriever.  This wasn’t always the case… 6 years ago in July 2002 he was not at all well.

He had an emergency surgery performed by his vet who found a growth on his spleen causing bleeding into the abdomen which was a serious life threatening problem.  Tulli recovered from the surgery but the bad news came when the pathologists diagnosed Haemangiosarcoma from the tissue submitted by the vet from the surgery. 

Haemangiosarcoma is one of the most malignant solid cancers affecting dogs and humans.  In dogs the survival after spleen removal is only about 2 to 3 months.  Tulli’s owner, Francis, brought Tulli to see the doctors at Animal Cancer Care and he was treated with a chemotherapy protocol using a drug called Doxorubicin.  He had 5 doses three weeks apart and apart from one episode of sickness he had no problems with his treatment.

Tulli is now free of disease and is living his old age happily at home with his family.  He has beaten all the odds.  Even with surgery and chemotherapy there is only a 50% chance that dogs with splenic haemangiosarcoma can live 280 days and very few dogs survive this cancer.  

Tulli is a very lucky dog.

The Australian Animal Cancer Foundation will use the information from Tulli’s case to help research this cancer.  Currently there are proposals to work with molecular biologists and other researchers at the University of Queensland to get a better understanding of such diseases and to identify ways of better treating high grade sarcomas so that we can produce cures like Tulli’s in all dogs with this cancer and also in people with high grade sarcomas.

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