
21/03/2025
***OPINIONS WANTED PLEASE***
The HT Vista is a relatively new, non-invasive device that can be used to quickly help determine whether your dogs lump is 'cancerous' or not. It looks a bit like a supermarket barcode scanner and is held over the lump for 40 seconds before giving an immediate answer. The appointment would be carried out by our nurse Sarah and is likely to be around £50. It is portable so could also be done as a home visit for an additional cost.
If it was a 'non-cancerous' lump Sarah can give appropriate advice regarding monitoring. If the device suggested something more serious then sampling could be performed and a vet appointment booked to discuss the results.
Is this something people would be interested in (in which case please comment 'yes'), or would you want to see a vet straight away and perform more traditional aspirates (in which case please comment 'no')?
If you have any other questions or prefer to message instead, please let us know your thoughts. More information can be found at https://www.ht-vet.com
Edit to answer the popular questions: the accuracy of the machine is comparable to the aspirates we would traditionally take. For any statistically minded people (not me!) it has a 90% sensitivity and negative predictive value of 97%. This basically means that if the machine says the lump is 'non-cancerous' this is an extremely reliable answer, which is important as we do not want to just monitor a lump if it might be more serious. If it says a lump is cancerous then in the majority of cases this will be accurate, but with further testing a small number of cases would actually be non-cancerous. This would mean the dog had some further diagnostic testing done, but the outcome would be positive. At the moment it is only for lumps in dogs though, not cats