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Electrochemotherapy (ECT), a medical treatment widely used in human patients for tumor treatment, increases bleomycin toxicity by 1000 fold in the treated area with an objective response rate of around 80%. Despite its high response rate, there are still 20% of cases in which the patients are not responding. This could be ascribed to the fact that bleomycin, when administered systemically, is not reaching the whole tumor mass properly because of the characteristics of tumor vascularization, in which case local administration could cover areas that are unreachable by systemic administration.

Oral malignant melanoma is the most common, but aggressive oral cancer in dogs with poor prognosis. Electrochemotherapy (ECT) has therapeutic potential in such tumors as effective local treatment. Therefore, the aim of this prospective clinical study was to evaluate treatment effectiveness of ECT in as first line treatment for canine oral malignant melanoma, and search for factors influencing treatment outcome.

Nasal cavity tumors are usually diagnosed late, when they already have infiltrated adjacent tissues thus requiring very aggressive treatments with serious side effects. Here we use electrochemotherapy (ECT), a well demonstrated treatment modality for superficial tumors.