Odd Surgeries You Didn't Realize We Can Do In Pets
Medical technology gets more newfangled every day, and some of the things we can do in human medicine is getting close to Star Trek. But something people tend to forget is that most things that can be done in humans, can also be done in animals. They usually aren't, but that's not because we can't! However, here are some of the more common advanced or interesting surgeries we tend to do on pets...
1. Rewire salivary glands to act as tear ducts.
If the tear ducts don't work, the eyes get all dried out and then they stop working, too. Surgeons can work their magic to re-plumb the tiny ducts from the salivaries up into the eyes instead of the mouth. Then the pet cries when it eats. Not kidding.
2. Plant chemotherapy beads or gel inside their brain.
I mention this one because I actually had a patient go through brain surgery. The neurosurgeon did a bunch of CT scans to pinpoint the tumor, then they went in through an area a bit above and between the eyes. I believe they cut out a square of bone, did their voodoo, then put the square back like a lid. They implanted some gel that was bright on the CT, so they could assess post-op whether they got the whole area they needed. The gel was also impregnated with a chemotherapeutic to directly help kill the tumor cells it touched.
3. Put a bunch of chips of bone marrow into a basket and poof! Regrow spine.
This one I had to study for a brief presentation in vet school. Horses get a disease called Wobbler's where a malformation in the neck vertebrae starts pinching off nerves. They have to do fancy surgery to fix it, and my section of the presentation was on the bone grafts. Turns out they can take a small mesh basket, fill it with bone chips from the donor site, stick it in place, and it grows into proper bone.
4. Amputate half their whole freaking face.
Look up hemimaxillectomy. (Add "dog" or you're likely to get really grossed out)
5. Cut up the pelvis, realign it, and bolt it back together.
A "triple pelvic osteotomy" is an advanced surgical method to correct hip dysplasia in young dogs. It's a problem where the hip socket doesn't cover the ball joint, and someone thought up the idea that to fix it we could break the pelvis in half and rotate the socket more over the joint. Yeah, they actually do that.
6. Artificial hips.
In vet school, we had a patient who received a Total Hip Replacement. Our specialist surgeon flew in the super-specialist hip-surgeon, and together they spent 9 hours in a closed theater, replacing the defective hip with a plastic one.
7. Kidney transplant.
Kidney disease is so common, I get asked about this a lot. It's in the range of $10,000-30,000, and only performed in about three places in the USA (in dogs, at least--I think there are more options for cats). Interestingly, they leave the old kidney in there, so the recipient winds up with 3 of 'em. You may be wondering where the donor comes from--you have to adopt them.
8. Cataract surgery.
You might not have thought about this, but they can get cataract surgery just the same as people. The ophthalmologist can replace the lens with a prosthetic, too.
9. Open heart surgery.
They can perform open heart surgery to replace heart valves and do other cool things. I'm going to be there's probably one specialty clinic in California or London or somewhere that does this. The "open" part is what makes it so advanced, because they need to use a machine to circulate the blood while they cut open the heart. That said, I did witness a "closed" heart surgery at a local vet: they had to remove the outer lining of the heart (a pericardectomy), because it kept filling with fluid in this dog. They opened up the thorax and I could see the heart beating the entire time.
1. Rewire salivary glands to act as tear ducts.
If the tear ducts don't work, the eyes get all dried out and then they stop working, too. Surgeons can work their magic to re-plumb the tiny ducts from the salivaries up into the eyes instead of the mouth. Then the pet cries when it eats. Not kidding.
2. Plant chemotherapy beads or gel inside their brain.
I mention this one because I actually had a patient go through brain surgery. The neurosurgeon did a bunch of CT scans to pinpoint the tumor, then they went in through an area a bit above and between the eyes. I believe they cut out a square of bone, did their voodoo, then put the square back like a lid. They implanted some gel that was bright on the CT, so they could assess post-op whether they got the whole area they needed. The gel was also impregnated with a chemotherapeutic to directly help kill the tumor cells it touched.
3. Put a bunch of chips of bone marrow into a basket and poof! Regrow spine.
This one I had to study for a brief presentation in vet school. Horses get a disease called Wobbler's where a malformation in the neck vertebrae starts pinching off nerves. They have to do fancy surgery to fix it, and my section of the presentation was on the bone grafts. Turns out they can take a small mesh basket, fill it with bone chips from the donor site, stick it in place, and it grows into proper bone.
4. Amputate half their whole freaking face.
Look up hemimaxillectomy. (Add "dog" or you're likely to get really grossed out)
5. Cut up the pelvis, realign it, and bolt it back together.
A "triple pelvic osteotomy" is an advanced surgical method to correct hip dysplasia in young dogs. It's a problem where the hip socket doesn't cover the ball joint, and someone thought up the idea that to fix it we could break the pelvis in half and rotate the socket more over the joint. Yeah, they actually do that.
6. Artificial hips.
In vet school, we had a patient who received a Total Hip Replacement. Our specialist surgeon flew in the super-specialist hip-surgeon, and together they spent 9 hours in a closed theater, replacing the defective hip with a plastic one.
7. Kidney transplant.
Kidney disease is so common, I get asked about this a lot. It's in the range of $10,000-30,000, and only performed in about three places in the USA (in dogs, at least--I think there are more options for cats). Interestingly, they leave the old kidney in there, so the recipient winds up with 3 of 'em. You may be wondering where the donor comes from--you have to adopt them.
8. Cataract surgery.
You might not have thought about this, but they can get cataract surgery just the same as people. The ophthalmologist can replace the lens with a prosthetic, too.
9. Open heart surgery.
They can perform open heart surgery to replace heart valves and do other cool things. I'm going to be there's probably one specialty clinic in California or London or somewhere that does this. The "open" part is what makes it so advanced, because they need to use a machine to circulate the blood while they cut open the heart. That said, I did witness a "closed" heart surgery at a local vet: they had to remove the outer lining of the heart (a pericardectomy), because it kept filling with fluid in this dog. They opened up the thorax and I could see the heart beating the entire time.
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