Non-blinded treatment of aural -hematoma with oral prednisolone as a monotherapy in privately-owned dogs.

INTRODUCTION Aural hematoma is the most common injury of the pinna in dogs. Treatment options are various. More recently, medical therapy has been more commonly pursued than surgical options. Therefore, our hypothesis was that monotherapy with oral prednisolone for one month is sufficient to successfully treat dogs diagnosed with aural hematoma. In this open prospective experimental study without control group, clinicians treated 24 privately-owned dogs suffering from aural hematoma with oral prednisolone at 1 mg / kg / day for 14 days, followed by 0,5 mg / kg / day for another 14 days. In case of strong side effects, the dose reduction was already initiated after 7 days of treatment. The success was assessed subjectively after 14 days by the owner and after 28 days by a clinician or specialist. In addition, before and after treatment the thickness of the swelling was measured. In 21 of 24 dogs, oral prednisolone treatment for 28 days lead to a subjective clinical improvement of at least 80 %. The ear thickness was reduced by at least 50 %. This study showed that treating dogs suffering from aural hematoma for four weeks with oral prednisolone used as a monotherapy leads to promising results and could be considered as an economical, non-invasive and safe treatment alternative for aural hematoma in dogs.