Some information about epitheliotropic lymphoma an important tumour in veterinary dermatology

Cutaneous epitheliotropic lymphoma was discussed in a recent veterinary webinar at The Webinar Vet. A poll of the attendees revealed … 42% who do not see it in any one year and 58% who will see one to three cases a year. So a rare condition but never the less a difficult condition to treat, an interesting condition. Anthony Chadwick is a consultant dermatologist and wanted to give some information about this rare tumour to his members during their Thursday night members’ veterinary webinar. So Cutaneous epitheliotropiclymphoma … are you missing it? So the objectives for the veterinary webinar were to move this disease onto the vet’s radar if they were not really aware of it because Anthony sometimes get cases referred from vets and they’re quite surprised by the disease. They haven’t recognized it. Whereas once you’ve seen one of these and know what it is it’s always going to be in the back of your mind when you see animals with severe skin disease. It’s always going to be one of your differentials. Aetiopathogenesis was discussed because it is quite fascinating and then clinical presentations were discussed. There weresome slides of epitheliotropic lymphoma to showThen various differential diagnoses were discussed and then briefly diagnosis which really is histopathology. LucyOldroyd from Abbey Vet Services, a pathology lab specialising in veterinary dermatology took over then and showed somehistopathology slides of cases of epitheliotropic lymphoma. Prognosis was discussed and then the rest of the time was spent discussing treatment and Tom Chapuis from AB Science talked about Masivet®which is a relatively new product in veterinary dermatology that veterinary dermatologists have been becoming acquainted with and have been quite impressed with so Tom was be able to share a bit more of masivet’s action and the results obtained. So Epitheliotropic T cell Lymphoma is a heterogeneous group of circulating, neoplastic T lymphocyte proliferations. There are three different forms that we see both in humans and in the dog and the cat. Mycosis fungoides is by far and away the most common one that you will see and this is a disease which as the name suggests really is very epitheliotropic. It really just favors the epidermis. It can also affect mucous membranes and it can go systemic into the lymph nodes and also to the liver and the spleen. Sezary Syndrome is almost the same as mycosis fungoides but there is an involvement in the blood so you will actually see lymphocytes within the hematological picture. And then pagetoidreticulosis or lymphoma is really just epitheliotropic so it really is just within the epidermis. Probably mycosis fungoides is far and away the most common followed by pagetoid and then Sezary Syndrome.