Continued from last week
In last week’s column, in my haste to conclude the painful and distressing topic of tumours/cancers, I omitted mentioning two of the most frequent ailments in our tumour/cancer discussions, namely those associated with the vagina and the breast. We will include them in the weeks to come. For today, as promised, we’ll concentrate on the tumour found in fatty tissue – the lipoma.
Lipomas are non-cancerous (benign) tumours which develop slowly in fatty tissue just underneath the surface of the skin. They are common in dogs, but we have seen enough of these developments in cats, not to mention them. The literature reminds us that horses can have lipomas, but they are rare in other domestic species. Of course, since in many cases our animals (dogs, cats and horses) are not fed well, they rarely develop much subcutaneous fat, therefore, not many lipomas are seen in veterinary practice here in Guyana.
In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I have only encountered lipomas in well fed (over-fed?) dogs, especially where the dogs (usually female) are getting on in age. We find the lipomas located (a) around the ventral (undercarriage) aspects of the subcutaneous (under the skin) areas of the chest and abdomen (not to be confused with mammary gland (breast) tumours and
