"Amy's" owner had noticed a swelling on her side and understandably was concerned enough to bring her to our practice to see my colleague, Aga.

Within a couple of days the mass had been biopsied and a diagnosis of soft tissue sarcoma (a type of malignant tumour) was made. Surgery was scheduled for a few days later. Cancers of this type pose a problem to the surgeon because of their extreme local aggression. The time taken from identification of the disease to surgery can be critical and on this issue we are the envy of our NHS counterparts!

Surgery is only successful if large margins of normal tissue are obtained. 3cm of normal tissue around the cancer is advocated. Wide surgical excision is often complicated by the anatomic localisation of the tumour to important structures.

Fortunately, in "Amy's" case, the cutaneous haemangiosarcoma had arisen from blood vessels in the skin. This allowed us to excise a large area of tissue not just in width but also in depth. As well as the top skin layer, fat and 3 muscle layers down through to the abdomen were removed. The incidence of recurrence of this type cancer in both human and veterinary medicine is very high where an inadequate margin has been obtained.

As veterinary surgeons we are blessed with our feline patients who have very elastic skin and tremendous healing properties allowing us to repair very large areas with very little morbidity. Despite the fact that Amy's wound ran almost half the length of her body her owner was able to report a return to normal within 24 hours of her procedure.......... a rate of recovery that our NHS surgeons can only dream about!

Further laboratory reports on the tissue that was removed confirmed the healthy margin that we had been hoping. We've done our bit the rest is down to Amy!

Terry Dunne BVMS, Cert SAO, MRCVS

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