We recently saw Benji out of hours when he wasn’t very well, not wanting his food and just curling up in the corner. When he came to the practice he was a bit tender in his abdomen and not as bright as usual. He was also a bit pale when we looked at his gums. To investigate further we decided ultrasound scan Benji’s stomach and to run some blood tests. We were concerned that as he was pale he could have something in his abdomen that was bleeding and making him uncomfortable.

On the scanner we could see that Benji had a mass in his liver, however we couldn’t see any obvious fluid building up in his abdomen. We kept Benji in for observation and gave him pain relief to make him comfortable.

In the morning Benji was a bit brighter but we started to see some fluid building up and were suspicious that the mass in Benji’s liver was bleeding. By putting a needle through the muscle wall we confirmed that the fluid was indeed blood. Liver masses can be benign or malignant and can spread to other organs, sometimes before the first mass is found. There was a chance that if we operated to try and remove the mass and stop the bleeding that they would be nothing we could do, particularly if the tumour had spread. However the only other option would be to put Benji to sleep. Tumours within the abdominal organs can be prone to bleeding as they are not normal body tissue, sometimes with lots of blood vessels supplying them. Once they start bleeding they can be fatal if we don’t do something to stop it.

Benji’s owners decided to operate and we successfully removed the mass from Benji’s liver. During recovery we had to give Benji fluid support to maintain his blood pressure and to help replace his fluid loss due to the mass bleeding. We also had to provide Benji with pain relief, and other medication to reduce the risk of infection and to stop him feeling sick.

Within a few days Benji was feeling much better, comfortable and eating well. Although he had to have strict rest initially he soon recovered, and once his wounds were healed he was back to his normal self.

We sent a sample of Benji’s tumour to the lab to find out what type it was. Unfortunately it came back as likely a malignant tumour, so we are monitoring Benji closely for any recurrence. Thankfully his most recent scan was all clear!