Postoperative care and long-term follow-up after a rostral mandibulectomy to treat an ossifying fibroma in a horse

Abstract

Postoperative care and long-term follow-up after a rostral mandibulectomy to treat an ossifying fibroma in a horse.Ciência Rural, v.47, n.11, 2017. An ossifying fibroma is a proliferative, fibro-osseous, tumor-like lesion that develops most commonly in the rostral mandible causing distortion of the lip and adjacent teeth. This neoplasia occurs more often in horses younger than one year of age (ROBBINS et al., 1996;SPONSELLER et al., 2006;CRIJNS et al., 2015), but has been reported in several other species (ROGERS & GOULD, 1998;McCAULEY et al., 2000). Unilateral rostral maxillectomy and bilateral rostral mandibulectomy (BRM) with adequate margins have been considered curative surgical procedures and the best approaches to treat this neoplasia (AUER, 2006;WITTE, 2014). Radiation alone has also been reported to be successful (ROBBINS et al., 1996) and may be helpful as an adjuvant therapy in cases of incomplete surgical resection (WITTE, 2014). Although, successful BRM has already been performed in horses and is described in the literature (AUER, 2006;SPONSELLER et al., 2006; DIXON & REARDON, 2015), these reports fail to mention any complications or the difficulty of the horse to adapt and feed properly after surgery. Therefore, this case report describes the postoperative care and long-term follow-up after BRM involved in the treatment of an ossifying fibroma in a horse.A 3-year-old crossbred horse, weighing 230kg, had a large mandibular mass evaluated. Medical records and information from the owner revealed that dogs had attacked the foal when he was 2 months old causing lacerations in the lips and gum, and complete CLINIC AND SURGERY