A pet rabbit (female, 8 years old, and mixed breed) with symptoms of dyspnea, apathy, and weight loss was treated for an acute respiratory infection. Due to the lack of improvement, it was referred to the Imaging Diagnostics Laboratory of the Department and Clinic of Surgery for a computer tomography scan of the thoracic cavity. The examination revealed the presence of air in the pericardial sac, a pneumopericardium, along with pulmonary emphysema. A few minutes after the examination, the rabbit developed circulatory and respiratory failure and died. Necropsy confirmed the presence of a pneumopericardium and pulmonary emphysema, and revealed, in the tracheal lumen, the presence of a tumor histologically consistent with hemangioma. A spontaneous pneumopericardium occurs when air from the respiratory system moves into the pericardial sac. This is the first case of the simultaneous occurrence of tracheal hemangioma and a pneumopericardium in a rabbit.

Pulmonary hemorrhage is a rare cause of death in horses. Hemorrhage within the respiratory tract has many causes, including mycosis of the guttural pouch, invasive procedures causing serious trauma to nasal conchae, or lung biopsy. We report on a rare case of a fatal pulmonary hemorrhage in a horse after a severe cough during bronchoalveolar lavage. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of spontaneous hemorrhage in a horse during bronchoalveolar lavage. A 21-year-old mare which belonged to the didactic herd of The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine underwent BAL procedure for training purposes. Clinical examination prior to the procedure did not reveal any abnormalities and the horse had been classified as healthy. The horse was sedated with 0.01 mg/kg of detomidine and 0.01 mg/kg of butorphanol. The silicon BAL catheter was passed through the nasal passage into the trachea and then into the bronchus. Before catheter was wedged, the mare began to cough heavily and massive haemorrhage from mouth and nostrils occurred. Despite fluid therapy, shock occurred within 15 min and the mare was euthanized. Upon necropsy, site of hemorrhage was identified in the left lobar caudal bronchi, from a large blood vessel running directly beneath the bronchial wall. Upon histology, a chronic lympho-plasmocytic inflammatory process in left bronchi was identified. Moreover, Masson’s trichrome staining revealed severe, perivascular fibrosis. Although BAL is a relatively safe procedure, and such complications should be treated as extremely rare, this case indicates that, in some individuals with specific subclinical problems, even mild physical force such as a cough can lead to rupture of the artery.

Metastatic mast cell tumour in African hedgehog: A case report | M Kandefer-Gola, R Ciaputa, K Sulima, M Miszczak, S Lachowska, M Nowak | Agricultural Journals

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most frequent type of cardiac disease in cats. Due to its high prevalence and risk of sudden and severe signs, the disease is an important topic of various research. Despite the focus on the clinical course of the disease, studies presenting the pathological and histopathological patterns are rare. The study was conducted as a retrospective analysis of feline patients subjected to postmortem examination in the Cardiopathology Unit due to a clinical diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy based on echocardiographic examination and ACVIM guidelines. Thirty-four cats clinically diagnosed with HCM were enrolled in the study. During the postmortem examination, hearts were subjected to gross morphometric and histopathological evaluation. Our results show that the histopathological pattern in cats with clinically stated HCM is very diverse, affecting both ventricles and atria. The histopathological picture is more complex in animals diagnosed earlier and treated for a longer period. Moreover, it is generally unrelated to wall thickness, with only left ventricular fibrosis affecting the thickness of the left ventricular wall. In conclusion, further research combining clinical and pathological results is required to unambiguously determine the histopathological remodelling that takes place in the myocardium of cats with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Testin (TES), a protein localised in the cytoplasm and belonging to the LIM family of proteins, is part of the cytoskeleton localised along stress fibres and recruited to focal adhesions. It is considered a tumour suppressor protein in humans and decreased TES expression has been shown to increase cell motility and decrease cell-cell contact. In veterinary medicine, TES has only been studied in rat testes and, more recently, also in canine testes. The expression of this protein in testicular tumours is unknown. As the dog has been proposed as an animal model for the study of human testicular tumours, studies on canine TES may provide useful information for both species. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to demonstrate the expression of TES in the most common types of canine testicular tumours. For this study, paraffin blocks of 166 canine testicular tumours (53 Sertoli cell tumours, 50 Leydig cell tumours, and 63 seminomas) were retrieved from the archive of the Department of Pathology of Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences. Sections were obtained for complete description of the tumours, confirmation of the histological diagnosis, and immunohistochemical TES antigen location. Sections from 10 normal canine testes were examined as controls. The presence of TES was also demonstrated in fresh tissue from three types of canine testicular tumour. The diagnosis was confirmed in the 166 tumours, and TES was immunohistochemically demonstrated in 98 % of them and in all 10 normal testes. All tumour types had reduced expression of TES, even if not related to the tumour growth pattern or mitotic index, demonstrating that TES expression is reduced in canine as well in human testicular tumours. However, the reduction of TES expression appeared to be moderate, and these features were consistent with the evidence that testicular tumours in dogs are often well-differentiated. A complete understanding of the function of TES in cancer processes requires further investigation, but the relative parallelism between normal and neoplastic cells in well-differentiated, mostly benign testicular tumours provides a good basis for studying TES expression in more aggressive tumours, such as prostatic or urinary tract neoplasms.

Introduction: Testin is a protein involved in cell mobility, adhesion and colony formation. In rats, testin presence has been reported in the testes, and its possible role in spermatogenesis has been suggested. Studies in humans also suggest a possible role of testin as a cancer suppressor protein. In the dog, which represents both an important pet species and a good animal model for studying biological and pathological testicular processes, the presence of testin has never been reported. Material and Methods: In the present study, the expression of testin in foetal, prepubertal, adult and aged canine testes was investigated. Testes from 5 adult and 3 aged dogs, from 2 one-month-old puppies and from 2 foetuses miscarried at the end of pregnancy were immunohistochemically examined with a commercial antibody against testin. Results: Testin was intensely expressed in Sertoli cells in every testis examined. Spermatids were also positive for testin in mature dogs and in the testicular areas of the aged ones which were not atrophic. Weak expression of testin was also detected in all testes examined. Conclusion: The present study, the first demonstrating the presence of testin in canine testes, provides the basis for further dog–human comparative research and for studies on the role of this protein in canine physiology, reproduction and testicular pathologies.