fibro-sarcoma diagnosis of the lip

Question

smeagol's lip   I guess to make an extremely long story short i'll just start with I received news from our vet tonight that the results from our bunny's biopsy came back as fibro-sarcoma. Our bunny will be three yrs old on Dec. 1, so he's still young. He's had a red spot on his upper left lip for most of the year. It hadn't changed, didn't have any abrasions etc, he had previously seen two other vets who said it was nothing to worry about. We were stationed in Japan until this summer though (where our bunny is from) and the vets he saw previously didn't speak much english, though they seemed like good vets. Anyway, we're back in the U.S. and after a neuter surgery and a biopsy, we're at this diagnosis. His current vet admits he doesn't know a lot about rabbits (even though the SDHRS uses him for a lot of spays and neuters), he's comfortable with the anesthetic portion. He is going to talk to a surgeon and possibly another vet about treatment options, but he's thinking of removing it & isn't sure if radiation therapy would be needed or even advised or possible with a rabbit. In order to remove it the surgeon will have to remove most of the lip. I'm wondering what the best course of action is for my baby. Also, i'm hearing opposite things about whether or not he has a good chance, or it could just end up being a constant removal cycle. I haven't had a chance to look it up yet so I have no idea.

Answer
Dear Christina

I am sorry about the delay.  A death in the family has me running to catch up everywhere.

The diagnosis is not a nice one.  Fibrosarcomas can be not only locally invasive, but metastatic (meaning they can spread to distant parts of the body). How they behave depends on the individual.

Removal of the lesion would be effective only if large, clear margins could be obtained, and the location of the tumor will make that difficult.  Have the vets given you any further information on this?  It's going to be a hard decision to make, with no easy answers.

I wish I could be of more help.

Dana