Retrospective survey of neoplastic disease in dogs

Abstract

Neoplastic disease has become an important disease in domestic dogs over the years even though in veterinary medicine there is a lack of census of neoplasms. This report describes the tumor distribution between 2003-2011 in Fortaleza (northeastern region of Brazil). A total of 1,008 samples of spontaneous tumour growths in dogs from various tumor sites were obtained. The most affected sites were skin (52.98%; n=534) and mammary tissue (33.43%; n=337). Almost no neoplasms occurred in the respiratory system (0.10%; n=1). The most affected breed of dogs were Poodles (27.68%; n=279) and Crossbreeds (19.05%; n=192), the majority of them females (61.60%; n=621), stricken with malignant neoplasms, comprising 53.47% of all cases (n=539). The median age was 7.9 years (ranging from 3 months to 19.7 years) and most dogs were 1-8 years (57.54%; n=580) or over 8 years (37.68%; n=407).