Lumps/tumors?

[pearls pop]

I just got back from dropping off Pearl at the vets for removal of 3 lumps under the skin that are on her left rear knee. 4 years ago she had a small pea sized bump that in 5 days grew to the size of half a walnut on her left rear hip., I had that removed mainly because my vet was worried that Pearl would snag the protruding bump on something and then we would have a wound/infection problem. i also wanted to know if it was a bad tumor and the test said they were benign.

 

The three new bumps were discovered by my vet when i took pearl in for booster shot last wednesday and I made an appt. for monday (today) to have the surgery, these bumps grew maybe 20% in size over the weekend. My vet says she thinks 2 of the lumps are just fatty tumors (these grew the most over the weekend), the three bumps are close together and sort of lined up, with the two fatty tumors on either side of the other lump, which my vet says worries her because it is hard and not shaped like the other two.

Pearl is nine years old and i am aware that older female dogs often get many types of tumors. i I am not sure what i am asking but would like any feedback or knowledge that anyone wishes to share. I am wondering if this will be a recurring thing as pearl gets older, is there a cause for this or ? Thanks.

[diane allen]

Hopefully Pearl is back home, safe and sound (well, minus some lumps!), and everything is copacetic. I have an 11 yr old (nearly 12) who has numerous lumps and bumps. All have been checked, and all are benign. A couple are what I think of as huge (well, OK, she has really long hair and most folks don't even see 'em....), maybe just larger than a golf ball. Most are quite small, most are very soft. They have all grown over time, but I've never seen anything like 20% growth over a weekend! That would concern me, but if your vet thinks otherwise, she's the one seeing/feeling them.

 

Do keep us posted. Hope all is well.

 

diane

[pearls pop]

Pearl came home yesterday afternoon, bandaged from the tip of her toes to her hip with a splint under the bandages. My vet said she had to remove a large amount of mass right down to the muscle, and the splint is to keep her leg immobilized until the skin grows back together. My vet sent the mass to the lab as she is worried about one of the 3 tumors. She said that the tumors are in the same area as the first tumor we had removed 4 years ago, and that worries her. So now i wait for the lab results.

I have to try to keep Pearl calm for at least 10 days. pearl is being good about the bandage and splint, so far, but hasn't really mastered walking on three legs with her left rear leg held out straight because of the splint.

I have been trying to figure why these tumors appeared. I have a theory which I only thought of when i got Pearl home yesterday. I have an aluminum screen door which i used to leave ajar(until yesterday) so Pearl ccould open it with her nose, then she pops her head in and pushes the screen open and then her torso comes thru the screen door. As her rear end enters thru the screen door I have observed that the corner of the screen door will bump her on the left rear knee area. I wonder if the repeated bumping could cause tumors? I also wonder if diet could have been the cause. She has eaten kibble most of her life, i do add some vegetables to her dinner if the veggie i am having is something she will eat.

[Liz P]

Millions of dogs have been fed kibble their entire lives and never had a tumor. Repeated banging against the door would probably just cause scar tissue, not a tumor. Don't beat yourself up. I have a saying, "Once a lumpy dog, always a lumpy dog." Some dogs just grow fatty tumors because they are genetically programmed to do that. I'll keep Pearl in my thoughts though.

[pearls pop]

I just got back from the vet and having Pearls bandage changed. We had a appt. to have that done today but Pearl decided last night to remove most of the bandage and a few stitches, but my Vet said that it's starting to heal.

 

My Vet said she only got back partial results on the biopsy and that the one tumor she was worried about didn't have clean margins. She said if the tentacles reached down into Pearls leg muscle and if the tumors reappear in the future and then become malignant then i may have to think about removing the leg. She stressed that she wasn't saying that would happen, as she had taken the tumor out down to the muscle. But that it was a possibility being that these 3 tumors were in the same place as the first tumor.

 

I asked my vet about Pearl banging her leg on the screen and she seemed to agree that wasn't the cause of the tumors. And as to diet she didn't think that was the cause either, but she did convince me to put Pearl on a senior diet.

Fear not i will still love Pearl no matter what.

[AK dog doc]

Unfortunately cancer is pretty common in dogs, and though there ARE prodisposing factors in some cases (like, it's more common for dogs that live with smokers to have respiratory tumors than it is for dogs in smoke-free environments), sometimes tumors just happen. Most of these are based on genetics and have nothing to do with management. Repeated trauma can sometimes act as what's called a "promoter" of a tumor, but the genetics have to be there in the first place, and there's no way to take the genetically identical dog and manage it differently, and see if one develops a tumor and the other doesn't. The scenario you describe (management-wise) seems highly unlikely to have anything to do with it.

 

I wonder if the tumor that you describe might be a sacroma, like maybe a fibrosarcoma or something of that nature. There is a benign variant that is called a fibroma; it could be that was how the prior mass read out. We used to kind of subscribe to the idea that once a malignancy, always a malignancy, and once a benign tumor, always a benign tumor, but that isn't really true. It's USUALLY true, but there are malignacies that the body sometimes suddenly recognizes and goes, "Oh, CRAP! THIS isn't supposed to be here!" and then the immune system cleans it up. It's probably a bit more common to have the opposite scenario, which is the one where a mild-mannered tumor wakes up one say and says, "Ya know, I feel like being a real b**tard today," and turns over into malignancy.

 

There's also something called a "histologically low-grade, biologically high-grade sarcoma", which reads out as benign (sometimes repeatedly) on the histopath, but is concurrently eating the dog's head. The slides look like no biggie, but the behavior of the mass on the dog indicates malignancy (regardles of what the report said.) This is a possible scanario as well.