Bump on dogs face....

[chrissea]

My shih tzu had a lump on her face and we found out (after 18 months), it was her salivary gland. It was pushing out her eye. With her heart murmer and her age of 14, we could not have surgery done. We just lost her to kidney disease.
It will cost over $1000 for him to find out. MRI and everything else. The vets see dollar signs over this issue.
Good luck

[VTJess03]

If it's a salivary gland cyst (sialocoele), it should come out. Our bluetick just had one (only got to be about golf-ball sized and we noticed it very early on---only about 3 days since it had started), and luckily we had a vet that did the surgery for $150. I did quite a bit of research on this, and there are some good web resources. Just do a google search on one of the names above. Some places have vets that are much more expensive than the ones in our area.

The salivary glands are located on either side of the face at the back of the jawbone (where the curved part of the jawbone meets the neck), and under the jaw (in the middle). The reason for these cysts is that the salivary ducts get backed up (for whatever reason...can be trauma, but usually you can't tell the reason by the time it gets looked at). The saliva backs up in the gland, since it can't escape into the mouth, forming a fairly hard lump to start with. It can grow to a very large size (I found some alarming pics during my research). The problem with these is that if they go too long untreated, they can rupture and let all those salivary digestive enzymes loose into the surrounding muscle tissue (kind of like an appendix does when it bursts). Once this happens, it's much harder to do the necessary surgery.

The surgery for Maggie was an all-day affair, then a maintenance job for about 2 weeks. She had drainage tubes in her neck (which was really gross), had to have an antibiotic pill daily, and antibiotic cream on the place he cut. The tubes came out in 1 week and the rest of the stitches at 2 weeks and she is back to her normal self with a very small scar on her neck (which will probably disappear in time).

Good news, though, is that they do not usually come and go like the lump on your friend's dog. I tend to suspect allergies any time that things come and go like that, but I am very allergic to lots of things, so I may be a bit of a allergy hypochondriac. I would try to get the dog to a vet while it has the bump; forget about appointments and just take him as a walk-in and explain about the coming and going part after the fact.

[VTJess03]

Oh, as an afterthought, I thought I should mention that the vet I went to did not in fact do the whole diagnostic series of tests to determine that it was in fact a salivary gland cyst. He looked at it, knew immediately what it was and recommended it come out. I looked online and saw that an MRI was in fact the only way to conclusively determine this diagnosis (as mentioned earlier); however, I made the personal decision that whatever it was, it needed to come off. I didn't care if it was a tumor, a cyst, or an abscessed tooth. As far as I was concerned it had to come out, so I didn't have the full series of diagnostics. The confidence my vet had (he said he'd seen it pretty often, and performed the surgery on a somewhat regular basis) led me to make this decision which did save me money in the end too. If you don't have a vet you really trust, and you have the money, go ahead and have tests done, of course.

Good luck