Posted: 11/11/2025 2:05:28 PM EDT
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12yo nuetered male Akita. 5 years post-op TPLA in the affected leg. Very healthy, athletic weight. Has already been on glucosamine/chondroitin for years. Limping x 1 month on right rear. Now almost completely lame. X-rays show only significant arthritis of the stiffle (knee). Blood work is tip-top, no problems. No relief with carprofen after 2 weeks. D/C carprofen yesterday and switched to gabapentin in preparation for possible corticosteroid treatment. No relief with the gabapentin, either. Internet searching the crap out of this issue, of course. It seems that the latest and greatest for canine arthritis is a guided injection of Synovetin. Does anyone have any feedback on Synovetin treatment? |
"Cogito, ergo armatum sum."
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Not a vet, but I've been down a similar road with pets. My first thought is that if it is arthritis, it's pretty unusual to not see any improvement with NSAIDs. What kind of vet are you seeing? If you didn't answer "An orthopedic vet", you should go see one. One of my dogs, we chased a limping and pain issue for almost a year through regular vets, x-rays showed a little arthritis and some other things, but nothing that would explain it, and they were out of ideas. Finally I asked "What else can I do?", and they said "You can see an orthopedic vet." I made an appointment, the ortho said "Walk the dog back and forth in front of me. OK, now walk the dog toward and away from me. OK. I won't know for sure until I'm in there, but here's what I think it is." And once he got in with an arthroscope, he was right. But that guy figured out in two minutes of watching the dog watch what x-rays and many visits to regular vets couldn't explain. There's a lot that can be going on that won't show up on x-rays. |
Yeah, we did that. The ortho looked at the X-rays and told us that it wasn't arthritis, it was cancer (osteosarcoma)  We've got him on a combo of gabapentin and amantadine for pain. It's working a bit better than the usual canine NSAIDs, but not really all that well. We are lucky that there is a top tier animal hospital near us that has almost everything you could expect to find in a human hospital, and the specialists to go with it. It's quite the place (and quite the price!) We have an appointment there next week with a radiation oncologist to discuss palliative radiation treatment to reduce or eliminate his pain for the next few months. And to confirm the diagnosis as well, of course. If the diagnosis is confirmed we know there's not a lot that can be done, especially for an elderly dog. But if radiation treatment can give him another two or three comfortable months then we are going to do it. |
"Cogito, ergo armatum sum."
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I don't have any knowledge on Synovetin, but have success with Librela for canine osteoarthritis. My GSD had been on 50 MG Carprofen 2x daily since she was 7 years old. When she was almost 12, she was limping when she would stand up and stopped running trotting around outside. I researched and talked with the vet about Librela. Some vets stop NSAIDS when prescribing Librela. My vet continued NSAID/Carprofen and started a monthly Librela shot. The results were pretty good the first month and even better after the second shot. Attached File |
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@Bulldog8 Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, the diagnosis of osteosarcoma was confirmed. It's right at the site of his TPLO surgery. This is apparently all too common for TPLO (and TTA) surgery recipients. Of course, not having the TPLO would have had dramatic effects 5 years ago, so this is not a complaint. The gold standard for peripheral limb canine osteosarcoma is immediate amputation of the affected limb. However, we did not want to subject our 12 year old dog to a remaining 6-10 months on three limbs. The good news is that stereotactic radiation treatment, combined with a short course of chemo, is now an option, is available to us locally, and has shown similar results to amputation. At a minimum, we want him to be pain-free. This can be done with palliative radiation treatment. However, the stereotactic course was only a little more expensive. He has completed that course (1 treatment a day x 3 days) and the improvement was immediate. He now seems to be pain-free and his lameness score is down to 2/5. We expect that to improve further. Today was his first chemo treatment, which is only a 15 minute IV infusion. He's pretty wiped out. We'll see how he does over the next few days. If he tolerates it well then we will continue. The treatments are once every three weeks. Otherwise we are not going to put him through a full course as we'd rather whatever time he has left is as comfortable as possible. |
"Cogito, ergo armatum sum."