Interdigital Cysts in Dogs

Hey, guys. This is Dr. Lara here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. Today I'm here with Winston, who's an English bulldog, if you couldn't tell. And the topic of today is regarding interdigital cysts. What they are, how to diagnose them, what causes them, and also how to treat them. Foreign. So Winston's coming in today for interdigital cysts. They can also be known as interdigital folliculitis or forunculosis. And so if you come down here, you can see that he has, like a little cyst right here and then he also has another one. Let me see one. He's got one right here. And so, surprisingly enough, these things actually usually start from the bottom of the pad rather than the top of the pad, even though you're seeing it on the top surface. And so normally what happens is, or what this is, is the follicle is being damaged or plugged in as a result of a number of different things. It could be tied to trauma from some breeds of dogs. When you look at the bottom of the dog's foot, Abraham, if you come over here, you can see that most dogs will have pads, and that's where dogs should actually be walking on the pads. But when some dogs walk, they will actually walk on the haired part of the pad. And that is something that can cause trauma to the skin where the follicle sits and that kind of stuff. And then that can lead to the damage of the follic and potentially getting it plugged. The other thing that could potentially cause it is if they're chewing on their feet. And if they're chewing on their feet, typically that is could be a cause of some sort of seasonal allergy. Sometimes even food allergies can cause the intervigital cysts. And so those are some, some of the most common things that can be causing them. Now, that being said, it's usually not going to be a straightforward, easy thing. It's usually going to have a multifactorial part or, you know, problem list to it. And so a lot of times when we go ahead and we have patients like this, the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and we're going to get a cytology to see if there's any sort of infection going on. Usually there is some sort of infection, whether it's primary or secondary. And then what we will normally do is we'll go ahead and look at putting them on some anti inflammatories Some people might use steroids. I will typically use a short course of steroids and then put them on some antibiotics. Now, if you do have a deep infection in one of these things, it is possible that the antibiotic course could last around 12 weeks. So that's a really long time before we go down that path of putting them on antibiotics for 12 weeks. It's typically recommended that we go ahead and do culture on the cysts or the contents of the cyst to see what exactly is going on. Now, that being said, it is possible when we do a culture, we're usually not just going to want to go ahead and get what we call a culture, which is like a sterile Q tip, and just wipe it in on the surface. What we. What's actually recommended is that we go ahead and we get what's called a punch biopsy. So we do actually have to do like a little mini surgery and collect some tissue and then actually culture the organisms or the bacteria from there so we can get a true representation of what exactly is going on. And if we're going to have this patient on antibiotics for 12 weeks, then we know that we have them on the right antibiotic, because antibiotics do definitely mess with the GI flora. And so we want to make sure that if we are going ahead and having patients on an antibiotic for that long, that we have them on the right antibiotic for good reason. Now, one of the other things, like I mentioned, was having them or this could potentially be tied to allergies. So having them on things that will help protect the barrier of the skin, like omega 3 fatty acids, is one thing that you could potentially do. You could potentially look at putting them on or putting some booties on them. That would help from the standpoint if they're walking on the hair surface of their foot. And also if they have some seasonal allergies and they're not completely under control, it would keep them from chewing on their feet. So. So that works from or works on two different parts of the problem list that could be causing or contributing to the cysts. Now, the other thing is, if it is something that is really, really problematic, we could potentially do what's called laser ablation, where that is a mini surgery. And what we do is we go ahead and we actually just kind of destroy all the tissue with the CO2 laser. And that usually works. I think they did a study back in 2000, and it looked like the average time between the surgery or the laser ablation and another cyst forming was about three years. So it's actually pretty good. That being said, you know, these can be something that are ongoing. Bulldogs are super prone to them for a couple of different reasons, allergies and walking on the haired surface of their feet. Labradors are another breed, just just to give you another example of a breed. But other than that, it is something that wouldn't be something that is going to be resolved necessarily right away. Could be something that reoccurs in the future. And so just to kind of mentally prepare yourself, hopefully you guys found this video helpful. If you did, please give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and if you know someone who needs to watch it, please share it with them. Thanks for watching. Be safe and take care. Good boy. Sam.