Occurrence site of canine oral lesions: a retrospective study of 659 cases

Abstract

Many types of tumorous and tumour-like lesions occur in the oral cavity of dogs. Even benign neoplasia often represents great inconvenience due to potential restrictions of therapeutic surgical approach in this area. Whereas in human medicine, there are statistical data describing areas of the oral cavity, that are more prevalent for development of particular neoplasia, in veterinary medicine, these data are not yet available. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of tumours in dogs with oral neoplasia, the occurrence site of the most common neoplastic lesions in the canine oral cavity, as well as the effect of age and sex on the prevalence of these lesions. In this study we investigated oral tumorous lesions from 659 dogs, out of which 352 lesions were diagnosed as tumours and 307 as tumour-like lesions. The most common tumours encountered were melanoma (42%, n = 148), squamous cell carcinoma (16%, n = 57) and canine acanthomatous ameloblastoma (10%, n = 35). The median age of dogs with oral neoplasia was 9.9 years, with the range of 0.2 to 17.5 years. There was no significant association between sex and the type of oral lesion (tumorous and tumour-like). Melanoma was most commonly present in the caudal maxillary region, squamous cell carcinoma on the mouth floor, canine acanthomatous ameloblastoma in the area of the rostral mandible, plasmacytoma on the tongue, osteosarcoma was most often diagnosed in the caudal parts of oral cavity and fibrosarcoma did not have a specific site of occurrence.