Katy Townsend, DVM, BVSc(hons), MS, DACVS-SA

Publications

I am a clinician scientist, who uses best practice to give your animal the best chance for a great quality of life.

My research focus involves studying how tumors spread throughout the body, specifically to lymph nodes. Accurately determining whether cancer has spread is important to assess prognosis, what further treatment is necessary and what surgery we recommend. We cannot determine based on anatomy alone if cancer has already spread to lymph nodes, so we are looking into emerging imaging and intraoperative modalities to determine this.  My collaborators and I are assessing individualized staging for dogs and cats with wide varieties of cancer, to give our pets individualized treatments based on their individual disease process. Our research efforts ultimately will result in individualized patient care by allowing us to determine whether each dog or cats cancer has spread. This will help us determine what further treatment we should perform.