New member Maia — transsphenoidal hypophysectomy?

[djpassman]

Hi Marianne,
I'm new to this forum. My dog, Maia, has been diagnosed with Cushings. I'm trying to locate centers that perform the transsphenoidal hypophysectomy. I know Dr. Owen at WSU performs it, but I'm having trouble finding other locations. I'm trying to contact Texas A&M as a possibility. Someone mentioned a VCA in Boston, but I googled those and there are quite a few. I checked your Resources page and couldn't find anything. Do you know of other centers that perform this surgery? I would really appreciate it if you could let me know.
Thank you so much!
Deborah Passman

[labblab]

Hello Deborah, and welcome to you and Maia! As you can see, your membership has now been fully approved, so if you receive an automatic email requesting email confirmation of your desire to register on the forum, you can just ignore it. Also, I saw that you originally posted your request for information as a reply on another member’s thread. I’m leaving a copy there in the hope that Cat may return and see your question. She had done a lot of research about surgery in relation to her own dog’s situation, so she may have some tips to offer to you now. However, I also went ahead and also created this thread that will be your very own. This way, any members who do have info to offer will be able to talk with you directly.

I wish I had some immediate answers for you, but as I had previously written to Cat, it’s been some time since any members here have considered this type of surgery. So, unfortunately, I’m not really up-to-date regarding the current status of this procedure here in the U.S. I’ll try to do some research though, myself, and I’ll certainly let you know if I come up with any good options. In the meantime, if you’re a Facebooker, you might visit this canine Cushing’s group. I’m not a Facebooker, myself, but I understand they are a very active group and therefore this question may have been discussed more recently among their membership:

https://m.facebook.com/groups/89435412886/

In the meantime, if there’s any other way in which we can be helpful to you and Maia, please let us know. Any other info you care to share will be a help to us in that regard. For instance, do you suspect an enlarging macrotumor, or are you hoping to get a pituitary tumor removed before it has the chance to increase in size?

So do let us know if you have further questions for us. And I’ll definitely report back if I can find more surgical info for you myself.

Marianne

[labblab]

Hello again! OK, I’ve tried to do a little more researching myself, and it seems as though Texas A&M may be the best alternative to Washington at the moment. I’m guessing you may have picked up the reference to VCA Boston from the 2011 article about the surgery done on our member, Lucy, in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing any current references to Boston. Back at that same time period, another one of our members underwent transsphenoidal hypophysectomy at UPenn. The surgery itself proceeded OK, but very sadly, the dog died shortly after arriving home afterwards. UPenn does provide neurological surgical services, but I’m not seeing any references to the pituitary surgery on their website at this time.

In honesty, your best bet would probably be to email Dr. Owen. If you’re geographically distant from Washington, I’m sure she’d understand your interest in trying to locate a center closer to home. And if anybody knows the current status of the procedure here in the U.S., it would be her! I don’t understand why the U.S. has lagged behind Europe in offering this procedure more widely. But it seems as though it still remains a very uncommon surgery here :-(((.

tina.owen@wsu.edu

Marianne