Clinical staging in canine lymphomas

Two important treatment steps are crucial in dogs with lymphoma: establishment of cytological/histological tumor subtype and its clinical staging. Cytological examination of samples collected from peripheral lymph nodes is the first step of lymphoma diagnosis, but this method can be also used to establishing clinical staging – fine biopsy of spleen, liver, bone marrow and others, if necessary. Histopathology confirms the diagnosis, according to WHO classification system, however the entire lymph node or large its part has to be sent to laboratory. Regardless of the method of microscopic diagnosis, immunophenotyping by immunohistochemistry or flow cytometry allow to obtain detailed characteristics of lymphoma