Professional responsibility, “good practice and malpractice” in obstetrics is one of the major areas of medical-legal litigation.
Appropriate management of dogs with lymphoma begins with a well-timed and accurate diagnosis, taking into account both tumor and patient characteristics.
Pretreatment clinical staging accomplishes several important goals: it determines the anatomic extent of lymphoma, allows an accurate prognosis to be given to the owners, and helps direct therapy. The knowledge of lymphoma extension makes it possible to accurately restage dogs at the end of therapy to document the response type. Finally, standardized methods for staging are essential to critically assess and compare different therapeutic strategies, as incomplete staging work up impedes the comparison of study results.
