From:
dr_bruce_williams
Date: 2002-05-11 21:37:00 UTC
Subject: Re: dermal fibroma: ? for Dr. Bruce, & other vets
--- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., "gledhill63" <tag63@k...> wrote:
> 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. It was a white mass below the dermis incorporated in the
> muscle layers, approximately 5 cm x 3 cm, with a separate mass 1.5
cm
> x 1.5cm. Spoke to the pathologist who said these things generally
> grow very slowly and he advised to just watch it and if it gets
> bigger, then remove the whole thing. Barney is 2 and a half years
> old, and did excellent for the surgery.
>
> My question is this: anyone had any experience with these
fibromas,
> are they slow growing, would you just go ahead and remove the whole
> thing now while he's fairly young and in good shape?
Dear Tracey:
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