The owners of Maddy, a young active Spaniel, had noticed that four months previously she had developed a discharging wound on her right flank. More recently, a second discharging wound had opened up on the inside of her left thigh. Our soft tissue surgeons were concerned that with this presentation, there might be a migrating grass-seed as the root cause of these two discharging wounds, and were well aware that they can track into the most awkward of places, sometimes far removed from where the discharge is seen. We recommended that Maddy be assessed with a CT scan, as this can sometimes prove the best way of evaluating large areas of the body.

 

 

This CT image is a reformatted view (one reconstructed by the powerful computer on the CT scanner) through the lumbar (back) muscles alongside the major blood vessels (the aorta and vena cava) underneath the spine. A contrast agent (a dye that shows on CT scans) has been given intravenously and the two brightly enhanced kidneys can be seen at the top of the image. To the left and right sides of the blood vessels seen passing down the centre of the image, there is wispy contrast enhancement of the adjacent muscles (which should normally be uniformly grey). This is because the contrast has localised not only within the normal kidneys, but also within the inflamed muscle around the grass-seed abscess tract. This very quickly showed our surgeons the full extent of the problem and they were able to plan their surgical approach in advance. Not only were they able to fully clean up the affected area, but were able to remove the offending grass-seed which was sitting at the end of one the tracks from the skin, deep within the muscle. Maddy went on to make a good recovery.

 

 

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