Abdominal ultrasound as a complementary method for staging canine lymphoma

Abstract

Canine lymphoma is one of the most frequent neoplasms in veterinary medicine and it can affect several organs. Ultrasound examination has shown great sensitivity in detecting parenchymal abnormalities even before laboratory tests change, and it is considered an important advent to help staging diseases and to guide material collection. The main objective of this study was to investigate the contribution of ultrasonographic examination canine lymphoma in 70 animals and to propose staging between stages I to V, based on abdominal lesions of dogs with cytological or histopathological diagnosis of lymphoma. In this study, through a modified World Health Organization clinical classification, it could be determined that 28.6% of the animals were within stage I, 1.4% stage II, 41.4% in stage IV and 28.6% stage V and no stage III animals were observed. Despite the great variation of the ultrasonographic appearance of these lesions in lymphoid organs, the involvement of medial iliac lymph nodes was statistically significant and proved to be an important sentinel sign of the presence of lymphoma in these animals. Therefore, abdominal ultrasound imaging is of extreme relevance in clinical routine, as it allows staging abdominal lymphoma, its prognosis, as well as monitoring the treatment stablished.