This year old labrador has developed a fluctuant mass in his medial canthus. What might your differentials be and how might you investigate this? By the way, the fluorecein you can see we placed in the eye never got to the nostril on this side while it rapidly appeared there on the right hand side after we put the same amount in the right lower conjunctival sac – just a little clue!
This could of course be an inflammatory mass or a neoplasm, but given its position, a swelling of the nasolacrimal duct, sac or cannaliculus is most likely. We flushed fluorescein into the nasolacrimal duct an hey presto, when we aspirated fluid from the ‘mass’ it was tinged with dye. We fully aspirated and with a Jackson’s cat catheter opened the nasolacrimal duct but all to no avail. Two weeks later the mass was back – and this time more obviously on the conjunctival side of the lid as well as the dermal side. We diagnosed dacryops here and deroofed the cyst under general anaesthesia, as you can see here. This was curative.