Dear Tracey:
 
>Just wondering how long a ferret usually lives after a partial
>adrenalectomy or a full one?
 
I know there will be a lot of answers on this one, but the point that I
would like to make is that this not really a question that has an answer.
Lifespan after adrenal surgery is the result of a combination of factors:
 
1) How old was the animal that had the surgery - a six year old probably
   will not live another 3 years, but a 4-year old might.
2) What type of surgery was done - unilateral or bilateral
3) What type of lesion was present in the adrenal - overgrowth of normal
   tissue (hyperplasia), benign tumor, adrenal tumor?
4) Was the entire gland removed or only partial, etc.
5) Are there other diseases going on that may shorten the lifespan of
   the ferret even though you are 100% successful with the surgery.  It
   odes happen that shortly down the road, a ferret dies of something
   totally unrelated to the tumor
 
If you figure that about one month in a ferret's life equals one year in a
human's life, then if your ferret lives another year after surgery, that's
like you having a tumor removed and going on to live another decade plus
two years.  Don't think of the lifespan in terms of your lifespan, but the
ferret's.
 
Also if one is not done how long do they live and how is their lifestyle?
 
Once again, it depends a lot on the type of problem in the adrenal gland.
While all ferrets will lose hair, eventually muscle mass, undergo a shape
change due to the redistribution of weight, and chronic mild anemia.  You
may see a retrun to intact behavior, marking, bacterial infection sof the
urinary tract in females which may progress to life-threatening renal
infection, urinary blockage and death in males due to swelling of the
prostate.
 
Initially, you may not notice a lot of signs except for hair loss.  But you
will, and you may have waited too long to start definitive treatment, so
the surgery is harder on your ferret.
 
My suggestion is always to do surgery early in younger to middle-aged
ferrets, and even in healthy older ferrets.  Medical treatment should be
reserved for non-surgical and geriatric patients.  Surgery has the only
chance for a cure, and medical therapy will only treat the symptoms at
this point.
 
You may also want to search the archives - there is a tremendous amount of
material on adrenal surgery here on the FML.
 
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams, DVM
[Posted in FML issue 3307]