FERRET-SEARCH@LISTSERV.FERRETMAILINGLIST.ORG
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Date: | Sat, 13 Jan 2001 22:01:40 -0500 |
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Dear Kim:
>I hope someone can benefit from this info in the future. Forgive me if
>it's boring. I love this stuff!
For a pathologist, it is far from boring! It's what I do.
If you don't mind, I'd like to give an interpretation here. I don't think
we are out of the woods quite yet, and extreme vigilance is important.
While it is not a squamous cell carcinoma or a leiomyosarcoma, apocrine
tumors in this location are occasionally bad news. Malignant sweat gland
tumors can be well-differentiated, and these tumors have a nasty propensity
to metastasize early to internal lymph nodes. Personally, I'd rather have
the leiomyosarcoma - a malgnancy of the smooth muscle of either blood
vessel or urianry tract walls, because they offer the best hope of a
surgical cure if they are truly malignant.
The fact that the mitotic rate (or the number of cells that are dividing)
is up to 3 in some fields is of some concern. I have seen a number of
similar tumors, and some have been bad actors.
Let me make two suggestions.
1) Keep a very close eye on this lesion - if it turns out to be a
malignancy, its not good. In apocrine malignancies of the vulva in the
female and prepuce in the male, metastasis often occurs prior to anyone
ever seeing the first sign of a problem, and well before surgery.
2) If you can contact your vet and the patholigst, I'd be happy to look
at the tumor and see if I can identify as to benign or malignant. I've
seen a number of these before. Actually, I've recently started a study
on this type of tumor, and one more neoplasm - I've currently got eight
in the archive will certainly strength the study.
With kindest regards,
Bruce Willams, DVM
[Posted in FML issue 3297]
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