Well, thanks for attending and I'm honoured to be able to make a presentation to the Column Congress again. This is on a species that I'm very fond of. And have been for a number of years.

It's the hedgehog. And the hedgehog has become a popular exotic pet over the last 25 years in North America, and I assume somewhat in South America, Central America as well. But because of their small size and spiny coat, that can be a very challenging patient.

So today we will discuss some of the diseases and medicine of, of the pet, African pygmy hedgehog. So these guys are called African pygmy hedgehogs or white-bellied or the four four-toed or the cape hedgehog. There's 16 species of hedgehogs actually.

They're in class mammalia. Their order is Yipotala, which is interesting because it means truly fat and blind. They're not blind, but they don't see very well, and they're not really fat in the wild, but they can be in in captivity.

This is where they're located in the wild, they're found in central and eastern Africa. They're in family erinac, Adelayx albaventris, and albaventris is white ventral. There's 72 colour morphs, and again, they have a good sense of hearing and olfaction, but not very good on the vision.

There's also a European hedgehog, Enaceous, and that's really not a pet species, and in some countries, I think it including Great Britain, they're they're considered a endangered species. And they're illegal to own. So when they are found in Europe, they're often found on roads flattened like pancake, with tyre tracks over.

The name hedgehog Came into being around 1450, a long time ago, and it was derived from Middle English language, hedge, which because they fre frequented the hedgerows and hog because of their pig-like snout. So this animal came into you, what do you think you would do? Well, first you'd have to know that this is not a hedgehog.

This is it. It kind of. So this is a mono tramp like a platypus, and they're an egg layer from Australia, but this is what you might see.

So again, they are somewhat common as pets. Their importation from the wild is prohibitive though. They're cute, they're inquisitive, they're very interesting animals, and it's estimated it's maybe 40,000 pet hedgehogs in the US.

So again, they were a bad pet in the 1990s, but they're still relatively popular. In the US it's illegal to own in some states, and if you're going to breed them, then you usually have to have a USDA permit, which is the United States Department of Agriculture. Zoonotic diseases can can occur here, and there's probably 3 of them that we, we hear most about, even though it's it's not common at all, but they do occur, so you have to be aware of.

There's several strains of salmonella and the hedgehog, and the cases of transmission from the pet hedgehog to humans have been documented. And one year, for example, there was over 20 cases of salmon salmonella reported in the US. So it's probably safest to assume that the hedgehog might have some.

So you just want to be very careful, you know, don't have them in food prep areas and, you know, wash your hands afterwards, etc. Salmonella is a intermittent cheddar, so culturing is not usually performed if you still have to assume they're positive, you know they come back negative. There have also been several cases of dermatophytosis in, in the hedgehog, tripophytein is the main one.

And some people are actually sensitive to the spines, and you can get kind of irritation, . We call up urticaria. These guys are nocturnal and they're digging animals, so you wanna be aware of this and make sure that the clients are aware of this prior to purchasing the animal, because when these guys wanna play, you may wanna be sleepy.

They generally live 1 to 1.5 years in the wild, but in captivity 4 to 6 years is pretty good, and some have lived up to 10 years actually. The dorsum, that's the area where the spines are, is called the mantle, and they have short groove spines, and they're unbarbed, and this is in contrast, at least to the North American porcupine has quills that are barbed.

And there's no spines on the on the ventrum or or the muzzle which is you know the nose area. Weight is 250 to 700 grammes and the females are heavier than the males, and the body temperature is generally 36 to 37 °C. So it is lower than it is for other, most other mammals.

They can go into a torpid state if they're gonna get too cool or rarely too warm. The ideal temperature for these guys would be at 24 to 29 °C. They're solitary except during courtship and when raising young, and they're adept at climbing, digging, swimming, and jogging.

So they can jog several miles in a night in search of food and insects, and this conjures up an image of a critter wearing Reeboks and, and Nikes, tennis shoes as you know, and, having an iPod on. So I mentioned that lecture one time. And at the end of this class, because I lectured to veterinary students, one student came up and gave me this.

Well, she drew this during my lecture time, so. Although I was tempted to maybe to be a little disappointed in her, when I looked at this, now this is really fantastic. I can use this in my lecture, so I, I quickly forgave her, but anyway, this was pretty cool.

The carpenters jogging the hedgehog. So students can be creative. The males have a a ventral prepe.

You can see it here where the arrow is, OK? And these are the location of the of the testes, kind of a a perianal renal renal area and there's no scrotal sac. The female, the uterus is, is bicornuate.

And here's the opening here. There's no uterine body and the vulva is close to the rectum, and they have 2 to 5 pairs of mammy and the males also have nipples as well. So how do we determine if they're pregnant or not?

Well, that can be problematic. Sometimes just handling these guys can be problematic. So weekly weight comparisons are, are, are, are indicated, especially, you know, if a female gains over 50 grammes within 3 weeks, and obviously they can have access to a male.

Also during this time, nutritional demands will increase up to about 3 times as well. I put this in just to just to show that it's really recommended, in my opinion, that all exotic pets should be weighed routinely, whatever, whatever that means to you, maybe every two weeks, I don't know, but it's really good if they do that, and the clients get accustomed to that, they can oftentimes start identifying that there's medical issues early on. Because weight loss is frequently one of the the big indications of a of a disease process or health problem.

So, we is important. Also, it's really important because one of the big issues that hedgehogs have in captivity since they aren't running miles a night, is obesity. And this can help prevent that because clients can now monitor the weight better.

Oh, look at this one. So we, we would recommend at least a, a, an annual evaluation, a health examination, even, even when they're young. It's great when they come in as young, rare that they come into us when they're that young.

But if they do, not only can we evaluate the animal, which is good, but that's the time that you go through the husbandry to captive management with a client. And so they can have good management, . You know, qualities in captivity.

Of course you look at something like this, you know, this is a only has a face that that that that a mother could love. The babies are called pups or or or polyps. So some unusual things about their behaviour or, you know, how do they stay alive when they're so small.

First, they are nocturnal, which gives them some advantages of survival. Secondly, they have a defensive posture where they can, you know, ball up their spines. They can also pop up during this time.

So what they're doing there there contraction of the longitudinal muscles which are called the orbicular muscles. It's along the thorax and abdomen, and it acts as a purse string, so it kind of closes them up and rolling into a tight ball. They also have a lot of vocalisations.

So every time I handle them, they start making all these different sounds, it still gets your attention, you know, you know they're gonna do it. They have squeals, spitting sounds, and snuffling, grunts, sneezing, and some high pitched easy, kissing, so that kinda. Distracts a potential predator.

And here's a picture of one rolled up. Now look at that. You know, it doesn't look real, right?

It looks like some kind of like a sea urchin or something like that. So this is really quite a good evolutionary strategy for, for survival. They also have a an unusual behaviour called self-anointing or anting, and you may be wondering what in the world is it doing?

Well, this is generally a behaviour that's elicited by an unfamiliar person or an object or something like that. In most cases, they'll they'll lick the new object repeatedly until fro frothy saliva in the mouth is is formed and they can rub it on their spines or on an object. And the purpose of this behaviour is actually is not known, but they think it does at least impart a particular odour on itself or on its own range.

And down here is a picture of one of our client animals that was actually so anointing. You can see the whitish saliva being put on the on the spines. So very unusual, very cool.

In terms of captive management, one of the big problems we have is obesity. Again, as I said earlier, in the wild, they're always, you know, foraging for food, they're running, they're climbing, swimming, doing a lot of things, and they may not always find enough food. So, obesity doesn't occur in the wild, I'm sure.

But in captivity, when they're overfed and they're not exercising, then obesity is a real problem, and it's one of the biggest problems that you have of hedges in captivity. And they may have a large axillary fat deposits and and decrease the ability to roll up. So we say, you know, try to feed them only about 5% of the body weight day, that may be hard to monitor, but again if you have a Scale and the client is is weighing the animal and you kind of tell them what the ideal weight might be and they can do that to adjust if they should increase or decrease the feedings or.

Equally important, you need to encourage exercise. As well as, you know, decreasing the high fat food and, you know, kind of rationing the main diet. So you know at home like the clients need need to play with them, you know, supervised, should only be supervised if they're out of their their cage.

A lot of people have provided PVC tunnels and plastic tubes that they can go through and climb in and stuff, for exercise. There's also an exercise wheel. That's made for hedgehogs, which is really very good, and it's, it's it's solid bottom, so they can't get their cro, they can't get injured.

So all those things are really important. Malnutrition, . Can occur.

I don't think I've really ever ever recognised it and edgy, but severe body weight changes can occur in a short period of time if they're not that, you know, an appropriate diet. So what do we have here? Well, this is slightly obese, this this picture on the left, he's trying to ball up the best he can and he's not totally successful, but he's getting there.

But look at this guy. Now this guy was stressed when we were exam. Here's his head up here.

The arrow and here's his nonhead. And you can't roll up, he can't do it. So this is markedly obese.

You might think, well, that's, that's really quite bad. Well we haven't seen anything yet. Look at this guy.

Or go, this is morbidly obese. This is You know, very, very unhealthy, very, it's amazing that a client can let an animal get that mark, and here he is again. Look at this.

So he's trying to ball up and obviously he can't do anything, probably hardly even move. Really a serious health problem, these guys. This is a normal hedging, so this is what they should look like.

And look at this. It's morbidly obese, pretty amazing. And I just put this in just to reiterate again that it's important to monitor the weight.

Of these guys, it really is. Again, it gives you a good evaluation of their health if they're increasing too much, if they're losing weight, and I think it's important for the client to start thinking about ways of of monitoring the health of. Probably more likely to have them make appointments annually with the vet as well when they're kind of accustomed to to monitoring.

So, but how do you hold these guys because those spines are they don't really go into your skin, like certainly not like porcupine, but it's uncomfortable sure feel them. So generally we we usually either light towel, even a face cloth, for example, or light leather gloves, which I like, one of my interns just uses the polyvinyl gloves. Spines don't seem to bother her at all.

And then how do you unroll? Well, they roll up and that's one of the challenges you have. You can try to scruff them, find their scruff and kind of stretch them out, that might work.

Backward stroking, so that is where you, you have them in your hand and you're just rubbing their spines backwards. Sometimes they'll they'll they'll run roll. If you can grab their legs, the rear legs, and sometimes you can start pulling that out and then putting two fingers in or so, around the abdomen.

That's not usually very successful, but you can try it. Sometimes just patience and then none of that works, and I will give you a few other ways of doing it in a minute, but oftentimes we just go and like to like isofluorine, anaesthesia, or some other ways of sedation just really save you time, and, you can just get get a better evaluation of the animal within the mouth and be much easier than trying to struggle with his unusual characteristics. Yes, I should say, even before you do an exam on him, you can put him in a clear plastic container, and, and observe him.

Actually put them on the ground and watch them walk and then put them in a clear plastic container and then you can, you know, look up above as they're kind of walking in there and you can see their abdomen. I would get an idea that please certainly sex in that way, but also you get an idea if there's any evidence of of disease or health issues just in that one do it anyway. So again, you know, some hedgehogs are minimal to hand.

Clients handle them a lot. These guys cool. They just don't do it anything like a lot of other exotics, but in general they don't respond as well.

So what you can do is you can take it all up. Haji And kind of aim them down, so. That they're kind of encouraged to put their four legs out and touching the ground, and then you can put your your your hand in your abdomen around there.

And and try to hold them that way. Again, other ways of unrolling we talked about would be like you know rubbing their spines backwards and sometimes they'll unroll. Whatever you can do.

Some people have had some pretty good success taking a rolled up edgy and putting in a shallow dish of like warm water. This also, tends to work and just by putting in the water may promote unrolling for for salmon. Here's one that's being scruffed, and if you can really scruff them.

Like this, and then there's not not a lot you can do, but trying to get them like this is not as easy as you might think because they're they're they're pretty talented at rolling up. So again, if that doesn't work, you can't do it a reasonably good examination then you probably should consider some kind of sedation and again move design so pretty quickly they go down, respond very rapidly because that also lets you examine the mouth, which you really can't do very well, . On sedated.

Renal puncture. Well, if you're gonna try to renal puncture these guys, you know, they are small and their vessels are small. We certainly want to use a heronized syringe, and a very small needle, and when you get older like me, then oftentimes you'll use head loops as well, try to make it look look a little larger.

So the lateral sainus, can be used. You don't get much, but you might you might get a small sample. Some people have even lance it used uhmatic tubes to get.

The cephalic, it's kind of delicate, it collapses easily, so generally we try to avoid it, which is interesting because the phallic is is one of the sites you go to if you want to put an IV catheter in. So apparently it's just easier to put something in phallic than it is to take something out. The jugular vein, well, it's deep, it's difficult.

It's in a similar location as other animals, but it's really it's a a blind hit and it's, it's, it's pretty tough. I haven't had much luck on it. Craiola vena cava, can be found if you want to use a small needle.

But there is a greater risk of cardiac puncture, so you want to be very careful because the Relationship of the heart, you is it's not too far away from where you're going through the needle for the for the vena cave, so just be very careful. But it would be a similar technique as it would be for a ferret that you won't probably do. Toenail clip is not done and it's painful, it's not recommended.

You get a poor sample, so that would not be anything we would recommend. This is a a hedgy sedated, here is the the alley. And then they put a rubber band around it, try to have it stick up for more.

You try to get it again to get a blood sample or or a catheter. In this particular case, this one is under isofluoran, and here's the catheter. And so the catheter is good for for procedures that you may be doing surgery or so, but following the procedure, we don't generally leave it in, at least not very long because once they start rolling up, then it's not usually very functional.

And here's our effort in getting a a jugular venal puncture again it's very challenging. We are successful here. They're under ISO because they're moving and you couldn't get them like this, but.

You know, you might try it if you're successful, and then you can avoid some of the other sites. And, and there's two ways of doing it. One is you can put them on the table sometimes like we might do a cat or something, and, or you can put them on their back and approach him from this way.

Whatever You feel most comfortable with. Here's a this hedgy is anaesthetized. Here's the iso, and we have a, a tube, it's heronized syringe, and we are going into the, the cave.

So again, you're going at like 45 to 6060 degrees at the manubrium, and you're aiming for the opposite leg and you're just going very carefully. This is a lateral sapindu, and again, you might get a small sample this way, but Sometimes you don't get very much at all. How about medicating these guys?

How do you do that? Well, in most cases, our, our preference is, is all, and it should be something that's probably compounded or at least as pleasant tasting, so they they can get used to it, and then they like it, cherry or banana flavoured, even then you usually have to wrap them in a face cloth and use a small dosing syringe. Sometimes if this is, you know, difficult.

Some people have had at least a small amount of drugs, . Injecting it into like mealworms or something like that or the favourite food. Subcu is is good and it's probably one of our favourites if we're not doing orally, but if they can have kind of altered absorption or a little slower absorption because there's less blood supply than in subcu of some other animals.

I am. I use the thigh muscle, but they really don't have much muscle, so we generally, we generally avoid that and try to do this the subhum. I, to the tibial dress has been used.

If it's really critical, you can use a 22 or 25 gauge needle or even a 1 inch spinal cord, but spinal needle, sorry, but you do have to be very careful. The advantage here is that once the catheter is in, it remains, you know, accessible even with the animals. Diagnostic imaging, radiography is really important, but the spines can obscure detail.

So what you need to do on the lateral view, you need to, of course, animals gonna be sedated or anaesthetized. You need to pull the mantle, which is the, the skin with all the spines on its back, and secure it with like a plastic plastic clip or, or tape it down some kind of paper tape. And that can work out very well.

Ultrasound, can also be used for evaluating the abdomen can become almost always sedated. CT is, it's useful as well, especially for dental loading, respiratory and skeletal disorders. But again, all these require anaesthesia or heavy sedation.

So this is radiographs and this is, you know, normal radiographs. This is really very good positioning and these radiographs actually were taken from a book, Clinical Radilogy of Exotic Companion mammals by Sam Silverman and Lisa T. So this is a book that I'd recommend that you consider getting if you don't already have it because it goes through a lot of small exotic mammal species, and it identifies, all the structures.

So this is from that book. It's the same radiographs we just saw, and again you can see all the structures and they're labelled and their name and I reviewed these, and I'm sure there's some differences here with other mammals, but I didn't, I never got the appreciation there's anything really, you know, grossly different, everything is about the right size, you know, right location, but it is good to have a guidelines like this. Anaesthesia, so if you're gonna anaesthetize them if, you know, that you have 1 to 2 hour fast, which is generally never a problem once a client gets there they wait a while for you anyway.

So, so that's not a big issue. I isofluoran is commonly used for induction and maintenance, and what we would do, we would, you know, pre-oxygenate them first and then use 4 to 5% IO and then lower it to 1 to 2%, delivered by face mask. For heavy sedation, alfaxolone it's been.

Recently, a popular drug to use in combination with midazolam. And the midazolam can be reversed with the flumazinil. And the alpaxone doesn't have a very long half life.

And if needed, you can intubate with 1 to 2 millimetre diameter endotracheal tube or Teflon IV catheter or modified feeding tube. So this is how we would generally go ahead and and anaesthetize. We put them just in a big face mask actually, and then we'd add oxygen to it and then we would go ahead and do the iso.

This is under face mask and this is face mask. So if you were asked, you know, what sex is this, or you would look right here in the middle of the abdomen and you see the preview so you know it is in fact a male. Surgery, although, you know, castrations and ovarian hysterectomies are seldom requested, sometimes prophylactic OHE should be considered because these guys do have a high incidence of uterine disease.

And the procedure is similar to other mammals, but there's sometimes there's a lot more, you know, fat around make it a little more difficult. Castration is performed through the perineal skin incision over each testicle and the closed technique. It For skin disease, the most common is Appariasis, what does that mean?

Well that just means infection by mites, and the most common mite is Cainia. So that is the one we almost always see. This disease can be subclinical initially.

As a matter of fact, I had a case a couple of years ago, and this guy, was 3 or 4 years old and came down with a severe case of, but he had never been in contact with another one since, since the client had had him and had him since he was young. So apparently, you know, this hedgy did have the mics all this time, but it took a time when this aeon became some, you know, immunocompromised, maybe he got older to where these mics and then really start taking over. And the signs that they could be subclinical again, or then they can get hyperkeratosis, separrhea, spine loss, which you can see very easily, and sometimes crust at the base of spines, and then pruritis.

They can be red skin and itchy and irritating. And that may result in animals becoming lethargic and and eating less as well. So diagnosis is skin scraping or just taking some of the .

Spines that have fallen out. So here are spines here on this cloth where we put the animal. We haven't even touched them yet.

We can just take these and oftentimes you can see mites at the at the base of the spines and then you have your diagnosis. And here, look how red this skin is. You can imagine how irritated it is.

So, Treatment. Celemectin is, is probably preferred very commonly, and here's the, the dosage. Ivermectin has been used historically as well, maybe prior to the use of cell, but it's also very, very good, and the dosages are there.

People have also had some success with Abarez and Frontline and a few other of these drugs, depending what you have in your area, but they're all pretty effective. You wanna make sure that you clean the Betty, you know, use newspapers down when you're treating so you don't have any. Betting, so to speak, other than just plain newspaper, you can change that daily, and if you have more than one animal.

And you certainly want to make sure that you, you treat all animals, coming on. So again this is just, you know, mild spine loss and you can examine those spines that are fallen or you can take a few others, . And and right here, look at these, you'll probably find the caperman and here they are.

And male and a female. So oral disease, so, dental disease, you know, with calculus and gingivitis and bronchitis is . It's not uncommon in these guys, especially as they get older.

And the treatment is would be like hard kibble, antibiotics and dental prophylaxis. So it's always good to examine the mouth of these guys whenever you do. Fractured and and abscessed teeth can occur.

And the signs may be weight loss and anorexia, salivation as well, and treatment would be like for other animals, extraction and systemic antibiotics. These guys are also prone to neoplasms, so squamous cell carcinoma are, you know, relatively common in these guys, and, and they're located in the mouth most commonly. So this is a hedgehog.

It was presented for dys dysphagia, so you're not eating swollen mouth, look at this, you can see the distortion of the maxilla and deviation. The, the nostrils as well, and this is squamous cell carcinoma. And this is one with his mouth that's open.

Here's the tongue. Here's a nose, he's under iso and look at this big mass. So that's squamous cell you can see kind of a lot of the areas of infection associated with that.

Where the, you know, heart pound's been destroyed. And this is a FNA of squamous cell carcinoma and he kind of mature theomorphic squamous epithelial cells here. So quite diagnostic.

Cardiovascular disease? So dilated cardiomyopathy again is is relatively common. The aetiology is unknown, however, it seems to be a genetic.

Relationship and even nutritional causes have been suggested. The signs would be like for other animals as well, you know, dipsia, decrease activity, decrease weight, and a heart murmur or ascites that can even die from. Diagnosis, radiographs, ECG or an echocardiogram or.

And a normal echocardiographic measurements have been published, so that's all in the literature. So this is a One of our cases and you just see that the heart is, is, is enlarged compared to normal. So you would need an echocardiogram here to distinguish if it's pericardial fluid or is it actual cardiomyopic.

And this is just one of the the papers I found this is in journal doing wildlife medicine, but it does show, you know, assessment of of of the heart measurements. So, blood work can be useful here, biochemical analysis, you know, for monitoring this disease and therapy would be somewhat similar to other, other animals with cardiovascular drugs that are used, you know, diuretics and an intensive converting enzyme inhibitors and others, but, long term prognosis is is poor, getting the drugs into them is challenging, monitoring it is challenging. You doing blood levels of any of these drugs is.

Challenging to use my hands probably impossible. But, since they aren't long lived, hopefully if this occurs it is at a later age. Neurologic disease, you know, that is a, a common problem, and it's a very significant disease.

So, ataxia may be caused by tophor, which is, you know, extreme temperatures causing to or trauma, toxins in parts, neoplasia, otitis inner and some other species, but two of the ones that occur here. The first is the intervertebral disc disease that can occur again, it's not common. I've seen a few cases and you get progressive hili ataxia and diagnosis is rheographs, and I'll show you that in a minute.

But the biggie, since the mid-nineties is wobbly hedgehog syndrome. And that's a demyelinating paralysis, and it's the most significant disease. So this is you know, radiographic imaging showing intervertebral disc disease and hey you can see the C2 and C3, and you also see spondylosis.

So again, radiographs are giving you diagnosis. But Watley hedgehog syndrome is the one that you, you see more commonly and it's generally always in in in mortality. It's a neurodegenerative disease of the brain and spinal cord of both African and European hedgehogs.

For prevalence of at least in North America approaches 10%, and they think it's family related genetics heritable, although it may be influenced by diet and other environmental factors. I, I'm always suspected like like a prion or something, but it's never been proven, but it seems like it would fit that pretty well, some of the other prion diseases we have in animals. No evidence of virus or autoimmune.

Age range is 1 to 36 months, average is 18 months. So with this disease they have an inability to close the hood, close up, they're incoordinating, in coordinated, they're falling to one side, tremors you may have, you know, exothalamus, I kind of protruding scoliosis, seizures, muscle atrophy, wasting, and it's generally an ascendingoresis or tenoporesis. So in early stages, the signs are often relapsing and remitting, so you may get some of these signs and owners concerned, but then the animals doing better again, but then it becomes more progressive and severe.

Paralysis is ascending in 70% of the cases, and you can see these animals are all alive under anaesthetized. But they're just not So, progression is generally accompanied by severe weight loss, without loss of appetite, and again, In the later stages that it's not eating. I can't, they can't get access to the food.

In 60% of the cases, they become immobilised within 6 months after onset of ataxia, and 90% they become immobilised within 15 months, and death occurs within 18 to 25 months after the onset. Treatment. Well, there is no good treatment.

They've tried all sorts of things, really with no success, supportive cares about all you can do. Here's one that they, they were creative here, have a little cart for a while to get some relief. I don't have to express the, the bladder, and again in later stages, they're not moving and have to be there, but this becomes a quality of life issue.

So, you know, euthanasia is, is. It wouldn't be recommended. There's no quality of life here at all.

And as soon as you know you you have this disease, you also want to make sure that you're not breeding these guys, because you certainly don't perpetuate. Diagnosis, histopath and you see spongiform bracules. You can see it here.

OK, this is in within the white matter. So you have demyelination and, the general inflammation is not associated. You also have neurogenic muscle atrophy since they're just not moving.

Neoplasia is a biggie. These guys are little tumour factories, so there's a very high incidence, especially in animals greater than 3 years of age. In some studies it goes from 29 to 52% of the edges had tumours.

In one study, 89.9% of the tumours were malignant, OK with regarded prognosis. Only 11% were benign and been reported in all body systems, and the most common are the skin, the reproductive, chemolymphatic, and alimentary.

They're commonly reported mammary lymphosarcoma, and oral squamous cell carcinoma, so all sorts of tumours, again, quite common. Clinical signs really depends on where the tumour is and how extensive it is, but usually you have presence of masses and eventually, you know, anorexia, weight loss, lethargy, dipsia, scis, depending on the the type of of tumour again, so it's variable. The diagnosis is FNA, .

Generally you would get assuming you have access where you where the tumour is biopsy histopath radiography can be useful to let you know if you have metastasis. CBC and chemistries, if you can get that much blood, it might be useful. CT MRI have been used, ultrasound, and then eventually, knee crossing.

The ultimate results. Treatment, surgical excision, supportive care, and other modalities depend on the type of tumour and your experience from other species. The prognosis depends on the stage and the type of neoplasm.

And most are moving. The oral sin the cell carcinoma is generally vocal they said. So this is a an adult female hedgehog, you know, clinical signs of not doing very well, kind of listless, and look at this mass.

FNA showed it was a mammary gland adenocarcinoma. Outcome was a poor prognosis. This is a squamous cell carcinoma in his mouth.

This is a 2 year old female, progressively increasing al massoor from the mouth, noticed 3 weeks previously. We wanna make sure you get a history, do a good physical examination, but again, oral squamous cell carcinomas are relatively common. You get swelling of the maxillary mandibular gingiva, loose teeth, tooth loss even, and it's locally in, .

Infiltrator, so it's malignant, but it's not metastatic. For rats, you can go ahead and anaesthetize them. Again, this guy is anaesthetizing, see it's a male, here's a creepers and you know, white tape and can pull the with the spines back so you can get a good radiograph.

You can also use some kind of plastic, like, like a potato chip clip or something to to hold it back. This particular case, This radiogram, this again is . Squamous cell carcinoma.

You have a right lateral and open mouth rostral, and you have extensive, audiolytic disease. See here. And here.

So you have severe extensive osteolysis of the left mandibular body and reus of the mandible as me to show you some soft tissue swelling. And some new bone production. So for additional diagnostic, you can do biopsies, .

And and and you'll see probably proliferating probecular of neoplastic cells, and you can do CT as well. Again, the diagnosis is what's the cell carcinoma. This particular case, I wanted to pursue it to see how extensive it was, so we actually did.

The CT, and so we have him on anaesthetized, of course, he's he's on a face mask, we have a pulse oximeter on him. And based on the results here, they just confirmed what we knew and the animal was euthanized. This is a hedgy.

And this particular one had a firm. Mass here on his leg and this was a hemangioma, so benign proliferation of vessels and determine that based on FNA cytology. Another interesting case is that a 5 year old female was presented at a large mass, you can see here.

On the left, caudal dorsal plane, progressive lethargy, so we put them in a chamber and first gave him oxygen, and then we went ahead and iso them down and obviously even before that, you wanna make sure you got a good history, the diet, environmental history, observe the animal, everything else complete physical exam. Then, we took radiographs and you can see this large mass and see it's like bony material and certainly mineral lines, I guess I should say. And the owner, we gave a poor prognosis, the owner did want it removed, and so we, we certainly agreed to do that.

It was a malignant spindle cell tumour. And, and so we, we prep him for surgery, and it's interesting that you can go ahead and remove these spines just using clippers. It works out really quite well.

Then we went ahead and we prepped them. You know, got ready for the surgery and he's anaesthetized, temperature probing, ECG pulse ox, heat pad, remember because you don't want to get any lower body temperature. And this is the mass.

Extremely large. Then we did surgery, surgical removal using radiosurgery and a scalpel blade, and radiosurgery is really good for these small animals because you can really reduce the amount of blood that is lost. This is the mass that's excise.

You can see how large it is, areas of necrosis and the histopath of the tissues, examine it turned out to be an exoskeletal osteosarcoma, but unfortunately it revealed that we had, you know, incomplete excision. And this is closure of the of the surgical site. So this is the histopath the photomicrograph of the exoskeletal osteosarcoma.

It shows a pleomorphic population of spinyloid neoplastic osteoblasts, surrounded by and are embedded within, tumour osteoid. So here's the tumour osteoid here. And then here where the arrow is, the osteoids actually mineral line.

And on this one, there's multinucleated auto osteoplastic cells, mixed with neoplastic osteoblast, and so you can see here. OK, well. Well, the animal died 3 months later since it was in complete decision, and you can see that there was evidence necroy of spreading to the liver, so it was metastatic.

This is within the liver and it just shows it had the same features as the primary extraskeletal osteosarcoma that we described previously osteoid and the mineralized osteoid. So we're, we're we're about winding it up now, a few other things they can get it certainly trauma, because they are kind of small and somewhat sensitive, so it can be a result of being on wire floor cages which they shouldn't be, or male to male interactions, they probably shouldn't be together. Treatment would be like other bandages, slims, antibiotics, disinfectants.

For disinfectants, we use a dilute chlorhexidine and sometimes it just topically, silver sulfadiaine works well. Example of a trauma. This was a free roaming hedgy that came in and this is it was on the carpet this house and human hair was wrapped around so we determined that it was viable we removed that, no, with anaesthetizes, of course, bandage, and this is 3 days later right here and you can see that the, it was healing.

So, In summary, basically, common things occur, commonly to these guys. Obesity associated with husbandry, mites, husbandry possibly, oral periodontal disease, cardiovascular disease, neurologic disease, neoplasia, you know, these are tumour factors, trauma associated with cosmery as well, and other diseases like you have with other species. So you wanna make sure that because these guys have a kind of a short.

Lifespan, they often hide signs of disease that you do have an annual or semi-annual examinations. They really recommended. You can review the diet, review the husband tree, check for tumours, and again they are prone to cardiobo disease and you know, feed them kibble and things like that.

You may need to do some dental scaling and polishing as well, and the CBC in chemistry can be useful if you're able to get. Weighing regularly, we said is important. There's no vaccines that are used here.

Elective neutering is not generally done, but, it might help if you have an overly aggressive one and certainly reduce any, any chance of getting tumours. How about their suitability for pets, well. Zoonotic potential.

Salmonella, dermatophytosis, sensitivity to spine, not common, but certainly does occur. They're not particularly personable in a way, but, they have a relatively short time. Oh, I, nocturnal.

That can be a problem for some 12, but they are small, they're cute, inquisitive, quiet, solitary. They're easy to care for, they're playful, and they're really quite entertaining. So with that, again, I appreciate your attendance and I hope you gained some appreciation for this unique entertaining species.

Thank you very much.