>I work as a surgical tech for our vet clinic, and had one of my ferrets,
>Barney, in last week for his annual exam.  Found a mass on his abdomen
>that we biopsied this week and it came back as a dermal fibroma.
 
Dear Z:
 
This is not an uncommon finding in the skin of ferrets, and may go by
a number of other names - collagenous nevus, adnexal dysplasia, among
others.  Many are probably also read out as old scars.
 
These tumors tend to grow very slowly, and are completely benign - nothing
to worry about at this point.  Unless it really starts to bother him, I
would just tend to follow the pathologists advice - only remove it if it
starts to cause a problem.
 
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams, DVM
 
The URL for this post is
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret-Health-list/message/13065
[Posted in FML issue 3780]