how much does an intestinal biopsy cost?

[denice]

I don't remember how much Patch's ultrasound was. He was very sick when he got it done. He stayed at the vet's for about a week. I had been doing the vet hopping thing and by the time I took him to that vet clinic he was in fatty liver. He had a lot of diagnostics done and came home with a feeding tube. The ultrasound can only determine thickening of the intestinal walls and can see any actual growths. As far as the thickening being either IBD or Small Cell lymphoma that would require a biopsy. I chose to treat for IBD with steroids. He had 8 very good years after that. He had the same symptoms, vomiting, anorexia and constipation. I think that is why other vets didn't go to IBD as a possible diagnosis, they didn't think of it because he didn't have the hallmark diarrhea.

 

[Pouncecat1]

X rays aren't very helpful unless a foreign body shows up. My vets (all 4 vets in the office) all assumed my cat had a foreign body ingestion because of his symptoms and x rays. I wasted a lot of money on multiple x rays that weren't helpful. I went for the ultrasound because I refused to consider exploratory surgery when the vets all said they "didn't know what was wrong, but it might be a foreign body." Am I going to put my cat through a $1500 exploratory surgery when the vets don't know what the problem is? Hell no.

My cat presented very suddenly with vomiting. Never had diarrhea, only some constipation. So they immediately assumed foreign body and not inflammatory bowel disease.

The internal medicine specialist- took one look at his age, palpated his intestines, and told me, "just to warn you, I think this might be cancer." But let's go do the ultrasound.

I think taking one x ray to check for a foreign body isn't unreasonable with a cat that's vomiting. But if that shows nothing, or unspecific results, you really need to do an ultrasound to know what you are dealing with. If you just looked at X rays, I would have put my other cat down. The x rays looked terrible- hugely dilated stomach. Like her stomach was 4x as large as a normal stomach. Pounce's X rays were just as concerning, large gas pockets, ileus. So the x rays can be very misleading without giving you any real diagnostic information.