Meet February pet of the month - Brodie

Brodie, a lovely natured ex hearing dog was a really interesting second opinion case.  She presented following a year of intermittent tummy upsets which had frustrated her owners and vet.  Although she had undergone blood and other diagnostic tests she came to us without a diagnosis, althougth her liver had been shown to be dysfunctional and damaged.

To obtain the all important diagnosis , the question that we needed to answer was; is the diarrhoea primarily a result of a gut or liver problem? This we tried to answer by looking at gut function with a blood test that showed us that the lower part of her small intestine was malabsorbing but not the upper part [curious!]. 

We then performed an abdominal scan which showed the presence of a liver mass and an obstructed gall bladder.  Although diarrhoea would be an uncommon presentation of a liver condition/disease, it seemed very likely that the liver would be the primary problem, with gut dysfunction resulting secondarily from the size, pressure and the location of the liver mass.

Liver masses are often cancerous, so after a chest xray was taken to screen for possible spread was clear, we examined her liver laparoscopically. With a 2.7mm diameter camera we were able to confirm that the mass only occupied one liver lobe and that the rest of the organ looked healthy.  This enabled us to proceed to an open procedure to remove the affected liver lobe using an ultrasonic hepatic resector. Brodie made an uneventful recovery and the histology of the excised tumour has given Brodie an excellent prognosis for a complete cure.

Following receipt of the initial blood test result, the process described above was performed on one day.  This is typical of the way we try to resolve cases efficiently and make us very happy. Great case, great dog.