[Computertomographic characteristics of primary brain tumors in dogs and cats].

Since computed tomography (CT) was introduced to veterinary medicine in the beginnings of the 80s, the CT of the skull has mainly been used for the diagnosis of brain tumors. The present study includes 18 dogs and five cats, all patients of the Clinic of Small Animals of the School of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. After a CT of their skull was made, a primary intracranial neoplasm was confirmed by a pathomorphological and -histogical examination post mortem. Four of the five cats had a meningioma, one cat an astrocytoma. With five cases the meningioma also predominated in the dogs, followed by primary lymphoma with four cases. An astrocytoma, an oligodendroglioma and a choroid plexus papilloma were diagnosed respectively in two dogs. A pituitary gland tumor, a germ cell tumor and a medulloblastoma represented individual cases. Based on the pathomorphologically and -histologically confirmed diagnosis, characteristics of these primary brain neoplasms can be found in their CT image. However, changes are not pathognomonic for a certain type of tumor; a definitive diagnosis cannot be made from the CT image.