My old girl has mammary tumours

[MotherPie]

Found out at a routine appointment on Friday and she is booked for surgery. I use PDSA since ex moved out and it works a bit different from private vets so I'm rather confused and looking for others experience. Hopefully there are some vets lurking!

They aren't going to do a biopsy just operate and X-ray her chest which seems strange as looking online it seems the non canercous ones aren't worth removing as they just come back? I'm now thinking the vet can tell they are cancerous just from feeling them .

Sorry OP I have no experience of this but bumping the thread for you in case others do.

Is she neutered? Neutered bitches are far less likely to get malignant mammary lumps than unneutered bitches. It's often better to just remove the mass and then send it for pathology, as a lot of mammary cancers come back from the lab as "mixed" masses, so biopsy of a little bit isn't always reliable. It also means a second anaesthetic if it's found to be nasty, so I would usually remove the whole lump. The chest xray is just to make sure there isn't any spread to her lungs. Good luck, I'm sure it will all go well!