Hello everyone, I'm a baby vet and still learning. I have a 1year old female syr

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Hello everyone, I'm a baby vet and still learning. I have a 1year old female syrian hamster patient showing auricular mass. I wasn't able to get enough FNA sample but I tried the small amount I extracted from the patient. I used diff-quick stain to stain the sample. I'm not sure if this is enough to know if the mass is benign or malignant, and I would like to ask for your insights.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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I use meloxicam long term for years in guinea pigs at 0.6mg/kg bid with no issues. The licensed meloxicam is as you correctly said 0.5mg/ml and it doesn’t work at the doses licensed. My understanding is they showed it had some effect but not necessarily how much analgesia it actually provided. All the exotics vets I know use the 1.5mg/ml strength and the higher dose I’ve indicated. I’ve been using 0.6mg/kg in guinea pigs for at least 15years without any problems and in some cases I’ve used higher. Add in paracetamol at 15mg/kg bid and sometimes I will drop the meloxicam to 0.5mg/kg if using multimodal analgesia. Gabapentin is better for nerve pain so I use it if they have spinal pain but always with meloxicam, my go to starting dose for gaba is 10mg/kg bid, in some cases I’ve used tramadol as well again 10mg/kg bid. Increase the vit c as when they are under stress their vit c requirements increase three fold- I advise broccoli daily for their vit c boost. Acupuncture also can be utilised. In my experience the meloxicam will not cause gastric ulcers however Guineas are really prone to stress induce gastric ulcers so famotidine is a good shout. I use 0.5mg/kg bid.

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Usually these are invasive papillomas. In some cases even malignant zymbal gland tumors that become so big that they protrude out of the ear canal. (This Dx is common in rats, they present as abscesses that do not heal in the tuba auditiva area, but I biopsies a couple of hamsters that came back with the same DX).
In any case, surgery with a bipolar radiosurgery unit can debride most of it, but regrowth is common, because it is difficult to excise tha base or all the polyp/papilloma/tumor.
Cytology as Marta Kamila Marciniak says, if possible histology/biopsy if you’ll try to excise. Treat with meloxicam and maybe an antihistamine for the itching.
Keep him comfy as long as possible. When/if this thing invaded the inner ear canal, they become very painful and infected, and qol is not worth it. Good luck!