Vetgirl Veterinary Continuing Education Podcasts

In this VETgirl podcast, we review the diagnostic yield of cytologic analysis of pericardial effusion in dogs. Is it worth submitting fluid analysis and cytology for your hemorrhagic sample? The most common causes of canine pericardial effusion include neoplasia and idiopathic effusions. Coagulopathies, left atrial rupture, and septic pericarditis are much less common. Among neoplastic causes, cardiac hemangiosarcoma (typically right atrial or right AV groove) occurs most frequently followed by heart base tumors (chemodectomas), mesothelioma, and lymphoma. Prognosis for neoplastic causes is highly dependent on tumor type. Cytologic analysis is considered highly useful in providing a definitive diagnosis of infectious causes and cardiac lymphoma, but is of limited value in identifying other neoplastic causes. This is in contrast to the relatively high diagnostic ability of pericardial effusion cytology to identify neoplastic etiologies in humans (likely because of the types of neoplasia seen in humans). Additi