Dr. Karen Emerson of the Emerson Animal Hospital in West Point introduces us to a ShihTzu who had to undergo major surgery when a mass of pre-cancerous cells were found growing in his penis area.
Dr. Emerson stresses the importance of checking for such growths and the symptoms your pets may demonstrate if they have one.
Dr. emerson: good morning, sunrisers!
I'm dr. karen emerson and today i have with me my receptionist stephanie and this cute little shih tzu right here is little man.
And little man actually had a major surgery a fehs ago.
He came in for his physical exam and we checked his ears, his eyes, she checked over the entire body, and he is a male dog, so i always do a really good exam on the scrotal area.
And it actually turned out that little man did have a mass on his penis area which can be life- threatening because it could be cancer.
So uh what we did is we y'know we did the total exam, and a lot of people don't think about looking at that area so it's so important that when your dogs have a good physical exam, that that area is looked at.
Some of the clinical signs they can show if they have masses in the penis area is sometimes they will fail to urinate or they'll kind of keep their penis sticking out some or they kind of hunch their back like they're in pain and you also may see blood in their urine.
Um, so they brought him in, we actually noticed the mass, we noticed it had started getting bigger so we scheduled surgery.
We went in and removed the mass, sent it off, and thank goodness it turned out to not be cancer, but it is so important when your pets are having their annual exams or come in for their vaccines that they get a thorough exam from head to tail to every area including the breast area.
We diagnose a lot of mammary tumors in dogs during their annual physical exam, but if that mass would have not been found and unattended, it could turn into cancer, and it could also block the flow of urine, um, it could cause major problems in the future.
So like i said, we removed the mass, we sent it off, we found out it wasn't cancer, but there are some dogs that come in that the masses prove to be cancer.
We have to make sure by sending them off, if we got all the tumor or not.
A lot of clients when we do mass removal are like do we do anything different if we sent the mass off.
I'm like no we wouldn't do anything different necessarily, but we would know if we got all the mass or not because the pathologist where we send them actually gets to the look at the slides and sections of the tumor to find out if the cells go to the edge of the incision or not, which our goal as a surgeon is to make sure that they don't.
We're actually going to show you a picture of what the mass looked like so you can know what to see if you do see your dog licking excessively down there or having any trouble.
We're going to show you a picture of what you would see uh visually.
If you have a dog that's licking excessively in that area or urinating a lot or you notice they're having problems urinating or in pain, please make that appointment.
Give us a call.
We'll do your analysis and a good exam and i promise, your pets will thank you!
I hope you have a great week!
Announcer: wcbi animal health with dr. emerson was brought to you by emerson animal hospital in west point.