Cytodiagnosis of Common Skin Lesions in Dog and Cat: A Review

摘要

Diagnostic cytology has recently been employed for diagnosis of some of the diseases in dogs andcats, more commonly for the diagnosis of skin lesions or masses. Valuable additional information has beenprovided by cytological features of fine needle aspirates (FNA), skin scrapings, tape preparations, swabs orby imprints of tissue cells. Cytology is a reliable and minimally invasive method of obtaining tissues fordiagnosis. It is a rapid method to be used and it can often differentiate non-neoplastic lesions (follicular cystsand inflammatory lesions) from proliferative lesions of the skin in dogs and cats. Inflammation is easilydifferentiated from neoplasia based on the presence of inflammatory cells and/or the etiological agents. Forexample, the presence of neutrophils with intra-cytoplasmic phagocytosed cocci confirms a pyoderma. Acetatetape impression while squeezing the skin has been found to be a sensitive method for the diagnosis of Demodexcanis in dogs and often detects more adult and larval mites than deep skin scraping. Cytological evaluation ofskin lesions or masses is an effective means for diagnosing many cutaneous and subcutaneous tumors in dogsand cats. For instance, based on cytologic category, mast cell tumors are in the group of round cell tumors.These tumors are composed of individual round cells that are fairly abundant on cytologic preparations andin many cases cytology was found more accurate in diagnosis of neoplastic skin lesions than the nonneoplasticones. Finally, the interpretation of skin origin cytology relies on the understanding of the mostcommon skin diseases that occur in these animals and on the familiarity with the most typical cytologicalfeatures that characterize each of these conditions.