From:
jviviano3@comcast.net
Date: 2005-02-24 15:29:25 UTC
Subject: Granulomatous steatitis = adrenal histopath
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <7969136.1109258965414.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
This is Drew's histopath after a bilateral adrenalectomy (3yr old neutered male ferret):
History: Tissue from left adrenal
Diagnosis: Granulomatous steatitis
Remarks: Adrenal tissue was not identified.
Histopathology: Section consists of adrenal tissue which actually consists of an abundant amount of fat. There is some areas of hemorrhage throughout and a focal area of macrophage accumulation with large foamy vacuolated macrophages. This forms a nodular mass type lesion. There is no evidence of adrenal tissue and all submitted pieces were processed and examined.
Questions:
1. Am I reading this correctly, in that there wasn't any adrenal tissue in the sample whatsoever?
2. Is there a chance that this mass may have been mistaken for an adrenal gland, and the true adrenal is still intact?
3. I looked up steatitis, and it is an inflammatory disease of adipose tissue, associated with nutrition deficiency in cats (vitamin E deficiency). Drew was on a diet of Whiskas dry cat food before I adopted him. Does anyone think there may be a correlation here? He's on a high quality ferret food now.
4. Has anyone seen this in ferrets?
5. Drew is very fat. I have no problems with fat ferrets, I prefer them over skinny ferrets. Many of you who have seen skinny, sick ferrets probably agree. Should I be concerned about his weight with this finding of granulomatous steatitis? Would I assume it may be distributed in other parts of his body? Is this a worry?
Thank you in advance for any help!
Jen & Drew, Jude, and Finnegan