5/1/2023 0 Comments Dog aural hematoma![]() Remember, though, that taking action is a choice, not a necessity: If you’re okay with that frankfurter shriveling up into a cauliflower, then you can do nothing. Some are mainstays that most veterinarians will recognize others are relatively new approaches that try to maximize the effort to get the skin and cartilage to start talking to each other again, and one has been used as far back as the time of the Pharaohs – on humans, at least. The inability to get those layers to reattach is what causes the ear to shrivel and become misshapen.īelow are some methods for treating hematomas. The overriding challenge is that the hematoma separates the skin from the ear cartilage – sort of like a calzone, to use another food comparison. That seems to be the general theme when it comes to aural hematomas: There are many different methods for treating them, and none is perfect. Not an ideal outcome, but not a terrible one, either. Blitz’s hematoma eventually resolved, and his ear was slightly smaller and a little thicker than it had been before. “But not everything.” His preferred treatment for aural hematomas was to insert a small drain into the ear, which we did. “Chinese medicine is good for a lot of things,” the vet said with a smile. But acupuncture and herbs were not options in this case. In Blitz’s case, I took him to a veterinarian whose expertise in traditional Chinese medicine I greatly admire. It’s sort of the doggie version of “cauliflower ear” in boxers (the pugilists, not the canines), whose battered outer ears can become swollen and misshapen, resembling the texture of the vegetable that lent its name to the condition. The bad news is that allowing nature to take its course can have aesthetic implications: As the blood-filled ear flap heals and contracts, scar tissue often develops, causing thickening and wrinkling that make it often noticeably different from its non-clotted counterpart. (There is a great diversity of opinion about just how painful ear hematomas are for dogs, and the only ones who know for sure aren’t talking.) They will not burst – even though by all appearance they look ready to pop – and the dog is left no worse for wear, except for having to endure the discomfort of a large blood blister weighing down her ear. The good news about hematomas is that, if left untreated, they are eventually reabsorbed. They are believed to be caused by trauma to the relatively thin tissue of the ear flap, or pinna, often as a result of head-shaking. An accumulation of blood in the ear flap resulting from a broken blood vessel, hematomas are common in drop-eared breeds like mine, though they occur in dogs of all ear types. The purplish, sausage-like lump turned out to be an aural hematoma. So imagine my dismay when I noticed that my handsome old Rhodesian Ridgeback, Blitz – he of the two gorgeously symmetrical triangles held crisply and smartly against his graying face – had what appeared to be a frankfurter growing on the edge of his right ear. In other words, while they have a utilitarian function (and an important one at that) they have a cosmetic one, too. If eyes are the windows to the soul, then the ears are its curtains: Whether they are minimalist Roman shades or fringed swags that would make Scarlett O’Hara blush, a dog’s ears frame her face and set off her expression.
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