Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
How dog tumor surgery margins shrink after removal
By Milovancev, Milan et al.·Published in Veterinary surgery : VS·2018·Department of Clinical Sciences·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Reductions in margin length after excision of grade II mast cell tumors and grade I and II soft tissue sarcomas in dogs.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of dogs with mast cell tumors and soft tissue sarcomas had surgery to remove their tumors, and researchers measured the lengths of the surgical margins (the healthy tissue around the tumor) at different stages. They found that the margins shrank significantly during the process, which could affect how well the surgery works and how much healthy tissue is left. Understanding these changes can help veterinarians plan better surgeries for dogs with these types of tumors.
People also search for: dog mast cell tumor surgery · soft tissue sarcoma in dogs · dog tumor removal recovery
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Quantify changes in the circumferential lengths of surgical margins of resected canine mast cell tumors (MCT) and soft tissue sarcomas (STS) between the time of collection and histopathology. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective, hypothesis-driven, clinical study. SAMPLE POPULATION: Two hundred and thirty-seven margins from 69 excised tumors (50 MCT and 19 STS) in 51 client-owned dogs. METHODS: The lengths of surgical margins were recorded (eg, cranial, caudal, dorsal, and ventral) for each tumor at 5 time points: intraoperatively (in vivo), immediately after excision (ex vivo), after formalin fixation (postfixation), once mounted on glass slides (subgross), and as histologically tumor-free margins (HTFMs). RESULTS: Compared to in vivo dimensions, the length of surgical margins at each processing step (ie, ex vivo, postfixation, subgross, and HTFM) was reduced by a median of 3.0, 5.0, 6.0, and 8.8 mm for MCT; 2.5, 2.0, 5.0, and 5.0 mm for STS. All processing steps resulted in significant reductions among MCT samples (P < .0001), except between postfixation vs subgross, and for STS samples (P < .0001), except between ex vivo vs postfixation and subgross vs HTFM. The maximum reduction in the total length of margins (from in vivo to HTFM) was 29.6 and 24.2 mm for MCT and STS, respectively. CONCLUSION: Surgical margin length reductions occur due to a combination of physical factors (eg, tissue elasticity, myofibril contraction, and histologic processing) and biological factors (eg, microscopic tumor infiltration into the grossly normal surgical margin). CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: These data provide information relevant to evidence-based surgical planning and may influence patient morbidity in the most commonly encountered cutaneous malignancies of dogs.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29064583/