[su_dropcap style="flat" size="3" class="green-drop-cap"]Q.[/su_dropcap] I have a seven-year-old, 65-pound golden retriever in excellent health. He has developed four lipomas in the past six months, and I have taken him for a fine needle aspiration/cytology each time, grateful to discover it's a fatty deposit. I am questioning the necessity of having this exam done each time a lump appears. I feel compelled to have it checked out, but want to be sure I am doing the right thing. I know goldens are very prone to these lumps as they are to cancer. He has been on a homemade, cooked, mostly organic diet with supplements and very limited vaccines since he was three.
[su_dropcap style="flat" size="3" class="green-drop-cap"]A.[/su_dropcap] You are correct in stating that lipomas are very common in retrievers. Your concern about goldens and cancer is also well founded.
Lipomas are typically very easy for an experienced veterinarian to differentiate from most other tumor types by using simple palpation. If there’s any doubt, it is not overly involved or painful/stressful for a veterinarian to aspirate a questionable mass. Aspiration material from lipomas, when spread across a glass slide, will reveal obvious fat, and sending it to a laboratory is in most cases unnecessary.
To aid in lipoma control, I’ve had success using Mega Lipotropic by Best For Your Pet, Lipocomplex by Progressive Labs, and the herbal formulation Chih ku & Curcuma by Seven Forests.