Dog's skin cancer fear

My five-year-old crossbreed dog recently had a skin tumour removed from his head. The pathology report was melanoma, although my vet is hopeful of a cure because there were no malignant features reported. But I'm still worried.

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A Highly qualified veterinary pathologists, often with a particular interest in skin tumours, are used to seeing many cases of melanoma.

There are several features pathologists look for in tumours that could be malignant. Considerations are given to whether the tumour cells have different shapes and sizes, variations in cell nuclear size, signs of rapid cell multiplication, and whether there has been invasion of neighbouring tissue.

For those tumours that have been surgically removed, as with your dog, the pathologist will carefully examine the margins of the tumour to ensure it is “clean” with no tumour cells remaining. There are also sophisticated tissue markers that can be used to identify malignancy.