AD136 – Advance25 – Medical Oncology in Practice

Advance25^TM Courses help you to develop your knowledge and clinical skills in a defined area of small animal practice. These fully flexible online courses include tutor support and interaction via live sessions and discussion forums. There’s no need to log on for the live sessions as your course materials are all recorded, and you have full access for a 12 month period. The course runs for a six week period, and you’ll get tutor support for a further 2 weeks in case you need to catch up. After that, you’ll still have full access although the tutor support will end. Complete your learning and get your CPD Certificate for 25 Hours of CPD.

Diagnosis and treatment of cancer is a large and growing part of daily veterinary practice, and clients increasingly want to provide advanced cancer care for their pets. Increasing your comfort level with handling your own medical oncology cases in daily practice can offer an exciting opportunity to expand your skillset, bring in more revenue to your hospital, and most importantly, improve the quality of life and survival time for the many oncology patients whose owners would like to try treating their pet’s cancer but might not be able to pursue referral to a specialist for reasons of cost or logistics.

The aim of this six-week online course is to give you a thorough understanding of the latest updates on medical oncology in dogs and cats, with a focus on improving and prolonging good patient quality of life as our top treatment goal. This Advance25 course is appropriate for clinicians interested in treating more medical oncology cases in practice, as well as those already doing medical oncology who want to further expand their skills in this area.

We will develop a rational, problem-oriented approach to help differentiate cancer from immune-mediated and infectious diseases that may present similarly, and similarly build your diagnostic skills for tackling those tough cases where it can be challenging to differentiate cancer relapse and progressive disease from other medical issues. We will cover chemotherapy protocols, monitoring recommendations, restaging schedules and prognosis for all the major medical oncology conditions, and provide guidance on supportive care during chemotherapy, management of chemotherapy adverse effects and palliative care. We will also present cutting-edge information on new oncology topics available on a referral basis in the UK that can benefit your patients such as electrochemotherapy, sentinel lymph node mapping, interventional radiology, electrochemotherapy and more.

Throughout the course the focus will be providing practical information with useful take-homes you can implement in your practice right after each session concludes. There will be lots of opportunities to discuss your past and present challenging oncology cases in the online forum, where we will also work through some challenging clinical scenarios. We will also develop participant skills in critical appraisal of the veterinary oncology literature by reviewing a few recently published oncology articles in the online discussion forum for each Session.

This six week course is fully flexible – there’s no need to attend live sessions as all course materials are recorded and you get full access for 12 months from the course start date. Full tutor support is provided for 8 weeks from the start of the course.

What you’ll learn:

Session 1- The Rational Approach to Cancer Diagnosis, Staging and Restaging/Overview of Chemotherapy Drugs and Mechanisms of Action

In session one we will present a straightforward approach to the diagnostic workup of suspected cancer patients in practice, including use of different imaging modalities, cytology, incisional versus excisional biopsy, and tips on how to read these pathology reports like an oncologist would. We will touch on some of the new cancer biomarkers and how these may be used in clinical practice in the future. We will also introduce sentinel lymph node mapping and go through examples of how this modality can help improve your patients’ cancer care.

Session one will also provide participants with a thorough understanding of all the common chemotherapy drugs available to you in practice, and how to best utilize these. Understanding the different families of chemotherapy drugs, how they are related to each other, and their unique toxicities is key for understanding how and when to modify our chemotherapy protocols when issues arise.

Session 2 – Lessons in Lymphoma and Leukemia

This session’s first talk will cover diagnosis of lymphoma and leukemia in cats and dogs, including an overview of immunophenotyping / clonality tests (flow cytometry, IHC/ICC, PARR) and how best to utilise these in practice. New diagnostic methods including liquid biopsy will also be discussed. In the second talk we will cover the latest advances in treatment of lymphoma and leukemia in dogs and cats, including the use of Tanovea (rabacfosadine) in dogs. We will also discuss management of high grade versus low grade/indolent lymphomas, including low grade alimentary lymphoma (LGAL) in cats.

Session 3 – Round Cell Tumour Roundup

This session’s two talks we will cover diagnosis and the latest treatment updates for all the other round cell neoplasms: mast cell tumour, histiocytic sarcoma, plasma cell neoplasia / multiple myeloma, and transmissible venereal tumour, which we are seeing an uptick of cases for in the UK as a result of rescue dogs coming from abroad.

Session 4 – Practical Use of Metronomic Chemotherapy and Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors in General Practice/Medical Management of Hemangiosarcoma and Osteosarcoma

Session 4 will start with a focus on practical implementation of metronomic chemotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors in general practice. These drugs are good treatment options for a wide range of carcinomas and sarcomas and can be easily incorporated into your clinic’s cancer care offerings. We will cover patient selection, drug options, dosing, possible adverse effects and monitoring.

Medical management of hemangiosarcoma and osteosarcoma will comprise the second half of this session, with the latest updates on options for managing these patients after their initial surgery is complete. We will also discuss palliative treatment options for inoperable presentations of these two aggressive cancers that can help improve patient comfort and quality of life, and give the families of these pets some additional good quality time together.

Session 5 – Update on Urothelial Carcinoma, Including Interventional Radiology Options to Manage Urinary Tract Obstructions/Medical Management of Anal Sac Adenocarcinoma and Hypercalcemia of Malignancy
In session 5 we will cover two of the most common and important epithelial neoplasms: urothelial carcinoma (also known as transitional cell carcinoma) and anal sac adenocarcinoma. Various chemotherapy strategies will be discussed so you can provide your clients with a range of treatment options, alongside a discussion of other complementary multimodal treatment options to prepare you to handle all the many different clinical presentations of these cancers. Interventional radiology treatment options for urothelial carcinoma available at some specialty referral centres will be introduced, including urethral and ureteral stenting. We will also work through the medical management of hypercalcemia of malignancy in acute emergency and chronic / palliative settings.

Session 6 – Introduction to Electrochemotherapy and Stereotactic Radiotherapy/Management of Chemotherapy Side Effects and Palliative Care
 In our last session we will introduce some new advanced cancer treatment modalities now available in the UK: electrochemotherapy (ECT) and stereotactic radiotherapy. ECT can be used to manage many tumour types that traditional radiation therapy would be prescribed for, but has a much lower cost and shorter treatment duration than radiation; it can be a helpful additional treatment option to offer clients that aren’t able to pursue traditional radiation therapy but would still like to pursue more definitive local tumour control. Stereotactic radiotherapy allows for administration of an extremely focused, high dose of radiation directly to a tumour, and can achieve similar or superior outcomes for condition like brain tumours and nasal tumours with only 1-3 treatments in total, compared to traditional hypofractionated radiotherapy. You will learn how these modalities work and what cases are potentially appropriate to consider referral for.

Finally, we will wrap up the course by discussing how to manage chemotherapy complications and side effects, as well as palliative care and hospice interventions for when our patients reach the end of their cancer care journey.

As the course is online, you can take part from anywhere in the world and still enjoy access to the course tutor for discussion and questions.

Click here to view the full dates for this course

Tutor

Sarah Stewart DVM (Dist) DACVIM (SAIM) PGCertVedEd FHEA MRCVS

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Any questions? Call us now on 0151 328 0444