A veterinary YouTube case discussion by Dr. Lera Clone about Winnie, a 10-year-old spayed mixed-breed dog presented for intermittent anorexia, dark urine and recurrent anemia. Abdominal X‑rays and ultrasound revealed a large splenic mass consistent with splenic hemangiosarcoma; thoracic X‑rays were taken to look for metastasis. Dr. Clone explains that splenic masses often require splenectomy and histopathology, notes the risk of intra‑abdominal hemorrhage if the spleen ruptures, and gives a guarded prognosis — malignant splenic hemangiosarcoma commonly leads to death on average within two to six months if metastatic. The team plans surgery (splenectomy) and to send the mass for histopathologic diagnosis.
Questions this video answers
10 years old
Splenic mass consistent with splenic hemangiosarcoma (splenic tumor)
Foreign. Doctor Lara here today. I'm here with Winnie. Winnie is a 10 year old female spayed mixed breed dog. And she's coming in today because she has a history of kind of like on and off, not feeling well, decreased appetite. And so mom had also noticed that she had really dark colored urine. And so we ended up going ahead, doing some, doing a urinalysis. And we had done some blood work on her yesterday. She was kind of anemic and that was something that we had noticed back in February. But she seemed to improve when we did the blood work back in February. And so now we're having these episodes again. Mom noticed that she was having some dark colored urine and so I told mom, I said we are going to need to go ahead and most likely do some X rays to see if we see any evidence of bladder stones which could be causing blood in the urine. But also because when I have a patient that's not feeling that well and they don't want to eat a spoon, especially in a large breed dog like that, I'm always concerned about tumors in the spleen. And so when we went ahead and did X rays on Winnie, what you can see here is this is the abdomen right here. These are all intestines, this is her bladder. We have kidneys over here, stomach right here. But then this big thing right here, this is a tumor. And this tumor is in her spine. And so the thing with these are typically called splenic hemangiosarcomas. So splenic meaning of the spleen. And then hemangio hema is blood. So this is a certain kind of cancer. And so when we have tumors in the spleen or masses in the spleen, first things first, where you treat it, surgery, you have to take it out because the spleen is where all the, is the reservoir for the blood. So if this ends up growing and growing and growing and then it kind of breaks like super ripe mango or something like that, now that blood all starts pouring into the, into the abdomen. And now you're in an emergency situation where you either need to go ahead and remove the spleen or consider putting them to sleep. There is a third option. It's a risky option and that is going ahead and seeing if the body will clot and allow that wound to heal. That being said, it doesn't fix the problem that you still have a tumor or a mass growing in the spleen. In this particular case, this is a tumor that can spread to the lungs. So we did shoot some X rays of the lungs and we'll be getting the information back about that from the radiologist. We did also do an ultrasound of her abdomen to confirm that it is in the spleen and also to see if there was any evidence of cancer anywhere else. Good news was that there wasn't any. It doesn't look like there's any evidence of cancer in the spleen or anywhere. Not in the spleen, but anywhere else in the abdomen. So now what we have to do is we're going ahead and we're setting Winnie up for surgery. Now, when you have masses in the spleen, 60 to 60% of 66% of the time, it's something that's bad. It's a bad cancer that spreads to the rest of the body and they usually succumb to the disease on average within two to six months. Okay. If the other 40 to 33% of the time it is something that's been out. And so what I always tell people is, if you can swing it, go ahead, do the surgery, remove the spleen, send it out for histopath, and find out what it's actually going to. What actually is going on. So that being said, we're going to be moving forward with surgery with Winnie, and we're going to keep our fingers crossed that this is something benign and then we're just going to kind of take it from there. If you guys have any questions about this particular video, please leave them in the comment box. If you found this video helpful, please give us a thumbs up. And if you found. If you know somebody who needs to watch this or you want to share it with them, send it to them. Thanks for watching. Be safe and take care of yourself.
