Mast Cell Tumors in Dogs

Hey, guys. My name is Dr. Lara here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. Today, we're talking about mast cell tumors. The reason we're talking about mast cell tumors is because we have one of our patients, Frances, which you may have seen on one of our other videos, she had what ended up being two mast cell tumors, one on her cheek and one on her hip. And so we had to go ahead and do some pretty interesting surgery to go ahead and make sure that we got the mast cell tumor out. And I'll tell you a little bit about that now. Why. So, first things first. Mast cell tumors are the most common skin tumors in dogs. They make up about 16 to 20% of the skin tumors in dogs. There are three different grades. There's grade one, grade two, and grade three. Grade ones are benign, meaning they usually don't act aggressive. And that's the majority of the mast cell tumors, usually about 8, 80 to 85% of the time, that's going to be the case. Grade three, those are typically more aggressive, and those have the potential to go ahead and spread, or what we call metastasize. Grade twos, those are split. You can have high grade ones or high grade twos and low grade twos. The low ones, less likely, they fall into the benign category. The high ones, they fall into the grade three, and the ones that are more likely to metastasize. The main way that you're going to diagnose a mast cell tumor is go ahead and do what's called a fine needle aspirate. That is one of the few tumors that you can actually go ahead and diagnose off a fine needle aspirate, you will not be able to go ahead and figure out if it is aggressive or not. With a fine needle aspirate, you have to do a biopsy. Now, one of the things, one of the keys for you to know about mast cell tumors, to get an idea if your dog has a mast cell tumor, is sometimes they just look like a little bump and it's not much. Other times, you may notice that they may get bigger and they get smaller, and they get bigger and they get smaller. The reason that that will normally happen is mast cells have something called histamine. And so this particular video right here, this is a chemical that is coming onto and attaching to a mast cell in one of the receptor sites. And what you're going to see is once it goes ahead and connects and triggers the mast cell to release all this histamine, then it's essentially causing this huge kind of allergic reaction kind of thing. And that's why you'll see these dogs or people who are having an allergic reaction where their face is starting to swell. It's because they have a bunch of mast cells that are just going ahead and releasing a ton of histamine. And so that's one of the things that will clue you in that your dog or cat may have a mast cell tumor. Now, the main thing to go ahead and treat mast cell tumors is surgical removal. With mast cell tumors, typically you want to get 2 to 3 centimeter margins to make sure that they go ahead and they are completely removed. If you go ahead and are looking to get a 2 or 3 centimeter margin around, you're looking about that wide around at least. And, and that's pretty big. And depending on where the tumor is at, it may not be easy for your doctor or your general practitioner to go ahead and get that done. We work with a board certified surgeon and three other surgeons as well. The surgeon who took care of Frances, her name was Dr. Babefski with Corps Veterinary Surgical Services. She came in and she had to do a crazy flap because she didn't want to distort Frances ear from all the pooling when we closed the incision. And so it is very important when you're removing mast cell tumors that you do a good job of getting clean margins. You may think that it may be a little aggressive, but more is probably better in this particular scenario. Okay. In some cases, if you do have evidence of metastasis or concern, if you have tumors on the fingers, on the gums, sometimes around the butt, or anywhere where it's pink like the mucosa, those are things that clue us in that a lot of times we will see dogs that have a poorer survival time where they don't last as long. So at the end of the day you want to know what it is that you need to do, how to diagnose it with the fine needle, aspirate, how to go ahead and treat it, typically with surgery, and then what are some things that you need to do to go ahead and get a clue that it is a mast cell tumor? Swelling then going back down, swelling going back down. If you guys have any questions about this particular topic, leave it in the comments. Otherwise, if there are some topics that you want me to discuss and I haven't discussed yet, leave it there as well. If you found this video helpful, please give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and share. Thanks for watching and have a great day.