Case

Holly is an 11-year-old Labrador who presented to me for an abdominal scan for a urinary tract infection which has quickly recurred after a course of antibiotics. This made us suspicious of an underlying process which allowed the bacteria to hide in. Generally, this could be a stone (cystolith) or a mass. After sedation, I palpated her abdomen, and this revealed a large abnormal mass. This was an incidental but significant finding, given her previous issues. It was so large that it forced her bladder out of view and was difficult to associate it with any other structures.

I discussed with the owners and took a fine needle aspirate from the mass to hope the laboratory would give us some idea of the origin. They suggested that it had been on splenic origin. How would it be possible to have a splenic mass causing urinary signs? On discussion with Holly’s owners, with that new information on board, we decided to investigate this further.

We decided to give Holly intravenous fluids to try and enlarge her bladder enough to visualise it. This did the trick, after a combination of an ultrasound scan and an x-ray, we found her bladder within her pelvis. It contained multiple bladder stones. This answered as to why she had a recurrent urinary tract infection.

Next steps

The next step was what do we do about it? Holly’s caring owners wanted to do everything for her to give her the best chance of a long happy life. Other options were considered but we decided that surgery was the best chance of cure.

We proceeded to remove Holly’s spleen which contained a 4.4kg mass and then removed all the bladder stones as well. She took a couple of days to recover after a big procedure for an older dog. But the whole thing was made worth it when the mass results came back from the lab and diagnosed as benign hyperplasia. So, excision was curative. She is now looking a lot slimmer and has got all her energy back.