Lola’s new skin lump.
Lola is a Hungarian Vizsla. She has a beautiful shiny, short coat and is doing daily exercises to recover from a hip operation. Suddenly a red raised lump has appeared on her left front foot. It is about 6mm wide and 3mm high surrounded by normal skin.
This could be a few things. Lola was examined by Dr Jill King, who clipped and cleaned the lump to look at it more closely.
Lola is such a good girl, she tolerated having a needle passed through the lump to try to get a fine needle aspirate sample. This can be quite difficult and not always successful, however it is a less invasive way to get information about skin tumours.
The sample obtained was minuscule and it appeared we would not get an answer. Below is the small group of cells present on the slide. Though small, the sample is very clear.
This is clearly a round cell tumour. The purple circles are the cell nuclei and the surrounding halos are the cytoplasm of the cells. There are no granules in the cytoplasm which may have indicated a possible mast cell tumour. Most likely this is a histiocytoma.
Histiocytomas are interesting, benign skin tumours which usually occur in younger dogs. They tend to disappear within 3-6 months without treatment. Lola has recently been through a major surgery. For now our plan is to leave the tumour with the expectation it will disappear within 6 months. If the tumour changes or grows it will be excised under a general anaesthetic then sent to the laboratory for examination.
Lola is such a great dog. Let’s hope this lump just disappears.
