Teeth Floatation and Tumor Examination

by Karen Pickering

While we compile reader stories, our own Karen Pickering has a story of her own she'd like to share...

Having a grey horse has never really concerned me. I’ve had one other in my lifetime with no health issues, despite the tendency greys have to develop melanomas. But while having a routine dental floatation, I decided to have the series of tumors in April's mouth and on her back and belly examined. 

        

The tumors in her mouth—two on her upper lip on the left side--appear to be melanomas. Messing with those can cause scar tissue (and they are far less serious a condition in horses than they are in humans) so we decided to leave them alone. The hope is that they don’t grow.

Then Dr. Sauter took a biopsy of the tumors on her belly. He suspects they are sarcoids, but we’ll get the results of the biopsy in a few days. They are rather large and hard to remove. There is quite a base area underneath the tumors, which indicates a much larger area is affected below the skin’s surface. Removing these is difficult, as there are a lot of veins and muscles in this area. Most likely, the best course of action will be to leave them alone and hope they don’t get bigger. They did require a few stitches to patch her up after taking the core sample.

     

There is a relatively new procedure, especially with tumors this large, in which a section of the tumor is removed a dissected into several pieces and freeze-dried. The pieces are then implanted under the skin in the neck area. It’s like vaccinating against further growth or development of more tumors.

The small tumor on her back is possibly an easinophilic granuloma. Dr. Sauter injected this with triamcinolone, which is a type of steroid. The hope is that the tumor will shrink. If not, it will need to be removed during April's off season. 

I'll keep you all posted once we have the biopsy results and see if the tumor on her back shrinks. I welcome comments to this blog entry, especially from other horse owners who have been through this kind of situation with their horses. What worked for you? What didn't? Anything you know may help other owners and their horses.