Page 1010 - The Veterinary Care of the Horse

All 6 types of sarcoid, i.e. occult, verrucose, fibroblastic, nodular, mixed and malevolent

(malignant) are found around the horse’s eye. In this site they can be highly invasive and
VetBooks.ir widespread, possibly due to the inoculation of tumour cells into adjacent sites by feeding
flies. (Figure 21.25.)

Figure 21.25 This pony’s sarcoid was successfully treated with BCG vaccine injections

TREATMENT OPTIONS

These include the following.
• Nodular and fibroblastic sarcoids around the eye often respond well to injections of the

human BCG vaccine into the tumour, see page 600. At the time of writing this is not
available in the UK.

• Injection into the lesion or topical application of chemotherapeutic agents.

• Radiation therapy is successfully used in the treatment of nodular and fibroblastic
periocular sarcoids (see page 599). This destroys the tumour tissue and causes minimal