Dr. Salkin, after asking you about my dog's mole last week, your response put me in a tailspin. I asked a few vets on JA and frankly they did not agree with your “suspicious for malignancy” advice. I was told repeatedly and read repeatedly that the only way to know if something was cancerous was to biopsy and test it. You immediately went to malignancy. This patient has a very similar mole and you told them, “Melanocytomas are a proliferation of benign melanocytes (pigment-producing cells). They're usually solitary, well-circumscribed, firm, brown-black, alopecic and range from 0.5 - 10 cm in diameter. No worries.” You also told another patient, “If this isn't raised, it's simply pigment - a lentigine (freckle) and of no significance. It can also indicate post-inflammatory pigmentation if there had been an infection or trauma at that area.” So many vets, vets on JA, and my own research on the web, have stated the benign behavior of blackened moles and melanomas on the skin, but never assume benign or malignant by look alone. You did that and you tore our life apart for a week. I have come to JA for answers for a while now, from my family members pancreatic cancer, to my spouses breast cancer, to the death of my mother in law from COVID, no one has ever given me such incorrect reasoning for potential cancer. I took your not experience and put you first on my question list at Just Answer, but perhaps you have become stagnant in your continuing education., perhaps you do not know all that you think you do, or perhaps you just had a bad day. None the less, my dog does NOT have cancer but due to your words, you have caused true deep worry for my family for a week. It is my hope that you will never visit a doctor or take your pet to a vet and get an uneducated and worrisome response like the one you give me. My vet and the histologist both said “It looks malignant”

October 18th, 2024

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