My 4-year-old Dobie girl, Natasha, had surgery today to remove a suspicious lesion from her side. I had first noticed what I thought was a small "pimple" on her side about two weeks ago. It grew from the size of a pimple to almost half an inch (or say one centimeter) in diameter in the course of a week or so. Needless to say, I took her in to have it checked out.

The vet did not like the looks of it and said it needed to come off, so she had surgery today. We just picked her up an hour or so ago and she is sleeping in a nice, cushy dog bed nearby as I type this.

What I found shocking was that the incision on her side is roughly six inches long and has, I believe, 18 sutures! It looks horrible, painful and huge. I'm really wondering why that was necessary for a lesion no more than half an inch in diameter. I know all about getting good margins, in case it is cancerous. (Won't know that until the biopsy results come back.) But still....

I haven't talked to the surgeon yet, but I will. I was just wondering if any of you might be able to help me understand why such a big incision was required.

eta: I should clarify that this was a lesion actually on the surface of the skin, not underneath. It moved with the skin and did not seem to be attached to anything below the skin. It was raised up a little bit above the surface of the skin, maybe 1/8 inch or so.

Edited by Cheri Grissom (11/04/2011 01:12 PM)
Edit reason: eta

I imagine that what was underneath was much larger than what you could see on the surface ... ?

Grace had a similar surgery years ago and I was also shocked at the size of the incision. It was huge! The vet explained it was so they could remove enough tissue to have clean margins if it turned out to be cancerous (it was not).

I just got off the phone with the vet and she explained it to me like this. They want to get a 2 cm margin on all sides with something that may be malignant. In order to do that, you don't just cut a circle out around the lesion; you go 2 cm out on opposite sides, and then your incision will look something like two long crescents facing each other. This enables her to sew back together something that is more like two almost-straight edges as opposed to trying to sew a circle together, and the end result should be a smooth surface with minimal scarring.

That makes sense to me, and it's what I was sort of thinking, but I just have not had to have this particular kind of surgery on a dog before -- plenty of other ones but not this exact thing. Now I have to wait about ten days for the biopsy results.

Hang in there. Hope all goes well. Animals heal so much more quickly then we do.

Best wishes for a good biopsy report.

Me too. Please let us know!

The type of incision your surgeon made is a plastic surgery technique. Clean margins are key, you do not want to do a second surgery.
Is this bump at a vaccination site? Just curious.

Betty, no, it's not anywhere near a vaccination site. It's on her right side, sort of over the area of the last couple ribs, and approximately halfway between her spine and her belly.

I'll post here again when I know the biopsy results.

Sounds very similar to what Grace had going on, right down to the location. Her's turned out to be nothing serious...aside from a lifetime of sebaceous cysts on and off. If I remember correctly, that is what this was in her case (think it was impacted/infected, but this was a long time ago!).

Hope Natasha's turns out to be nothing serious!