Hepatic and subphrenicabscesses in cattle with rupture into vena cavacaudalis.

Hepatic abscesses in cattle with rupture into the caudal vena cava are described. During the years 1934 to 1959, a total of 56 such lesions were encoutered in the 1279 autopsies of mature cattle carried out at the Department of Pathology, Royal Veterinary College, Stockholm. As a rule, these animals had died suddenly and unexpectedly. The characteristic autopsy findings were emphysema, haemorrhages, and oedema in the lungs, haemorrhages in the respiratory passages, and subendocardial and subepicardial petechiae. Haemorrhagic oedema was often seen subcutaneously as well as inter- and intramuscularly. The pulp of the swollen spleen was hyperaemic and soft, the lymph nodes were hyperaemic, oedematous, and haemorrhagic. The blood was generally well clotted as a black-red "currant-jelly" clot. The abscess which had discharged its contents in the caudal vena cava usually lay within the liver and less commonly was situated subphrenically between the diaphragm and the liver or within the thorax or, in one occasion, retroperitoneally about the kidney. From the abscess contents were isolated Corynebacterium pyogenes animalis or streptococci or both these together, and F. necrophorus, alone or together with streptococci.