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Diagnosis | Mummified fetus

Lab Animal volume 37, pages 110–111 (2008)Cite this article

We recommended abdominal ultrasound to determine the consistency and texture of the abdominal mass. Although additional diagnostic tests such as hematology or biochemistry would have been helpful in expanding our diagnostic database, we did not consider them as useful as ultrasound and exploratory laparotomy. In retrospect, we may have seen only a reverse neutrophil:lymphocyte ratio, due to the retrobulbar abscess, on hematology testing1. Leukocytosis is unusual in the rabbit, even with infection1. It is unlikely that hematology tests would have given much additional information about the abdominal mass.

We did not consider the ocular lesion and abdominal lesion to be related but rather incidental to one another. Although neoplasms arising in one organ site can metastasize to a distant organ, the mineralized appearance of the abdominal mass was not consistent with aggressive tumors that are likely to metastasize. While thymoma is a common cause of exophthalmia in the rabbit, the disease generally occurs in geriatric rabbits, causes bilateral exophthalmia and does not metastasize2. We believed that an exploratory laparotomy would give us the most information. In addition, if the reproductive tract was involved, we had proposed to the owner that we neuter the rabbit. Because of the owner's financial concerns, however, we did not pursue these diagnostic options.

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Figure 2: Dorsoventral radiograph of the same rabbit.

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Diagnosis | Mummified fetus. Lab Anim 37, 110–111 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/laban0308-110

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