The high cost is due to anesthesia, the biopsy, blood work, and the use of a laser to cauterize (if needed).
We don’t have a vet school here, but we have heard that outlying small community vets charge less, so we are going to look into those.
It is a ridiculous price. When she was coughing two months ago, it cost us $500 for an x-ray and medication to fix her up (steroids, cough suppressant).
The prices are probably based on location. I know some vet schools (LSU, for example), are WAAAAAY much more expensive than other surrounding hospitals. The things they do cheaper are some specialty packages and some complicated therapies that would be too costly on a small private practice.
The “wait and see” approach is not SOP, and it would be negligible and open to a suit (yes, veterinarians carry malpractice insurance, but much cheaper than humans). If that works within the framework of “veterinary-client/patient relationship”, that’s the vet’s problem. But you can see why some would CTA. And it could well be that, if according to the vet it looked like the other thousand or so cases of X he/she has seen, he/she may have no desire to remove it, as he/she has a good idea of what it is (granted, it may come back to bite his/her ass). If it didn’t look like anything else (benign) that the doc has seen, he/she would certainly want that checked out.
Biopsies are nowhere close to $1100… We’re talking about animals here… A simple biopsy at UGA is $45… or at least, we charge the vet $45. If the vet charges $90 JUST for the biopsy, not counting the surgery and anesthesia, it is not the pathologist’s fault. And you can see how $45, heck, even $90, is waaaay smaller than $1100.
Another reason why it is expensive is location…
Is the Op located in Scrooge McDuck’s vault? Geez.
LOL… I meant location of the mass, sorry… If the mass is in a more delicate place than others, requiring different setup, it can cost more…
$1100 to remove and biopsy that? There is no way in hell someone should charge that amount for something like that. $500 for x-rays and medication for a bronchial infection?
Where do you live?
There have got to be cheaper veterinarians around, even if you have to drive a bit to find them. Those charges are ridiculous, even for emergency treatment.
I’m in Calgary, Alberta. It’s expensive here, apparently.
That looks quite a bit like a histiocytoma. We’ve had two different dogs that got those on their legs (legs and feet, ears and head are apparently popular locations for them). They look a lot like warts, but they can grow fast and can bleed. Thankfully they are benign.
Oddly enough, they can sometimes disappear on their own, too; our vet at the time suggested we watch and wait with our dogs’ growths unless they started to bleed. Then it was time to take them off. Both times they did start bleeding, so we did have them removed. And for much, much less than $1,100 - even though it was awhile ago, I find it hard to believe that costs have gone up that much. I hope you can find someone much more reasonably priced to remove it and get a biopsy so you can be sure as to what it is.
That tumor tends to be more in younger animals…
And I’m wondering… have you asked the vet if they can do a fine needle aspirate (or an impression smear)? Granted, it may not give you a final answer or give you much information in terms of invasiveness and overall nastiness (if there is), but it may steer you into the right path (tumor vs infection, what type of tumor, what type of infection, etc.). It’ll probably cost less than the growth removal (much less), and it can give the vet some information they can use to decide treatment.
Which reminds me, that is probably the basis for many “wait and see” approaches people are mentioning here… The vets themselves have done the aspirates in-house (reading some of the common tumors is not that hard), and know what they most likely are. It is not as if they out of nowhere said “It is X, we will wait and see”, but rather that they poked it first, saw the cells, and then and said “It is X, and this most likely will not be a big deal.”
I had a dog with a tumor about 7 years ago. The biopsy cost nowhere near $1100 then, maybe it was $250. Her tumor turned out to be a very rare type, hemangiopericytoma. She had surgery to take it out and I think the entire surgery only cost about $1500.
One of our dogs was 7 and the other 10 when they got theirs. So MMV.
I think some may be getting a bit confused. The $1100 is for removal, stitches, anesthetic, biopsy, blood work and laser cauterizing (if needed), not JUST the biopsy. It’s removal and biopsy.
Anyhow, we have a friend who was a vet assistant in a small town about 5 hours from here. She is heading there this Friday and we may get her to take the dog with her and get it done there. She’s estimating the cost to be under $500. I hope it works out.
Our local vet school, NC State, has one of the few animal MRIs in the world. I used it for my dog and I think that cost about $500. There is one in DC and one near SF in CA.