Hi there!  A couple of days ago someone asked about adrenal carcinomas -
their ferret had just had one removed at surgery and the histopath report
said adenocarcinoma.  Most enlarged ferret adrenal glands are hyperplastic
or adenomas.  Adenocarcinomas (or carcinomas) are malignant, hence the
guarded or poor prognosis.  Was the gland affected the right or left one?
If it was the right one (which it often seems to be), the likelihood of it
having spread already is greater than if it were the left, since the right
adrenal comes right off the caudal vena cava (allowing it easy access to
the rest of the body) and also since it is more difficult to totally remove
all of the right adrenal gland.  Adrenal carcinomas like to spread to the
liver and lymph nodes.
 
Your options?  1) do nothing - the wait and see approach (your vet may
have gotten all of the tumor and it may not have spread yet).
2) do some chemotherapy to try to kill off any tumor cell that are left
(this could consist of just prednisone or pred along with some other chemo
drug).  How long does it take for a carcinoma to come back "with a
vengeance" so to speak (assuming there is some of it left in the body)?
It could be as short as a month or as long as a year or so.
3) the third option being a combo of the first two - do nothing for now
and when you notice signs of it recurring, do some chemo.
 
Hope that this helps!
Kate
[Posted in FML issue 3036]