by Frank Will

Created on: September 12, 2010

Seromas in dogs can become infected, are absolutely nasty in appearance, and can cause an extremely foul odor to occur at or near the site of infection. In the vast majority of cases, they will eventually go away after treatment and are not an extremely serious threat to your dog. However, they will still require a lot of attention, treatments, and then careful monitoring to watch for complications.

What are they?

Seromas in dogs is a pocket of clear serous fluid that can very easy form in your dog immediately following any type of surgical procedure. When your dogs small blood vessels are ruptured, blood plasma starts to seep out and it becomes inflamed by the dying and injured cells. These injured cells also contribute to this fluid. They are much different than what is referred to as hematomas, which contain red blood cells, and they are also different than an abscess, which contains pus and becomes infected very easily.

They will at first appear as a puffy like mass that will rapidly begin to cause swelling because of the fluid that is developing around the site of the incision. What makes them different from hematomas is that this serous fluid is blood without most of their cells. They will almost always appear watery in appearance, will have a very slight bloody color, but will not be anywhere near as dark as blood.

They form at the site of an incision that your dog has incurred as the result of a surgery, and swell up because of this fluid accumulating under your dogs skin. In some cases, they can become very serious, and because of this when they do appear, you should seek professional attention. If they are serious, they will have to be drained, but in the majority of cases, your dogs body will simply absorb the fluid. Once absorbed, the swelling will diminish and they will go away on their own.

What to watch for:

Seromas in dogs will almost always appear directly next to the sutures that have been paced in your dog as the result of a surgery. For this reason, the sutures will need to be monitored very closely. If the depth of the surgery has gone into your dogs deep layers, these sutures may have to be multi-layered. The deepest layer of the sutures will help to close the deep tissues in your dog, and the middle ones will help to bring both the middle layers and the lower layers together. The sutures that are on the most exterior parts of the incision will bring the outer layers of skin together.

These are also the only visible part of your dogs wound,

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