BACK
TO WEB VERSION
SUMMER/FALL
2003
TV Surgery for Pets
— Catherine
Gianaro
Macy couldn’t stop sneezing. Even after several
blades of grass were flushed from the two-year-old’s nose, something
still tickled her nasal cavity.
So her veterinarian sent the Yorkshire terrier to surgeons at the UGA
College of Veterinary Medicine.
Using a rigid endoscope, a tool common in human hospitals, the surgeons
found the culprit — one last blade of grass — without having
to resort to surgery.
Rigid endoscopes are now standard in minimally invasive techniques,
surgical and non- surgical alike, whether to fish out a stubborn blade
of grass or obtain biopsies and perform treatments in most body cavities.
“It’s a whole new approach to doing surgery in animals,” said
Clarence Rawlings, surgeon and UGA professor of small animal medicine. “Many
of these techniques have been used in people for nearly two decades.
“It’s something that is following the human trend by about
10 years. Our challenge is to figure out what kinds of conditions are
specific to dogs or cats that can benefit from these types of surgeries,” he
said.
For the past five years, Rawlings and his team have adapted more than
a dozen minimally invasive techniques traditionally performed on humans
for patients like Macy. Many of those techniques employ a rigid endoscope,
an instrument outfitted with a series of miniature lenses and lights.
A digital camera attached to one end feeds video to a television monitor,
enabling the veterinarian to see the surgical site.
“Some people call it TV surgery,” Rawlings said. “It’s
exactly the same thing they do for people.”
Instead of long incisions, minimally invasive surgery usually relies
on two to four small incisions, each about as small a one-fourth inch
long, to insert the video camera and other miniature surgical instruments,
such as forceps.
UGA veterinarians can adapt many of these procedures because companies
now make smaller and lighter surgical instruments, in part because
these techniques are now being used more and more for children.
“When we work on a 6-pound cat, we’ll use many of the same
instruments needed for a 6-pound baby,” Rawlings said. “A
lot of things we do are not that much different.”
Rawlings and his team have developed a wide range of minimally invasive
procedures for animals. Specifically, UGA veterinary surgeons can:
•
Remove a tumor or conduct a biopsy with an endoscope. “We can
also diagnose how far a cancer has spread by taking masses from particular
lymph nodes,” Rawlings said.
•
Perform a much quicker and much less invasive procedure on dogs whose
testicles cannot drop on their own.
•
Perform preventative incisional gasteoplasty on dogs that are prone
to bloat, a recurring and often fatal condition.“We reduce the
size of the surgical opening and scar, as well as the stress as far
as healing,” Rawlings said.
In the past year alone UGA vet surgeons performed approximately 50
minimally invasive surgeries on small animals as part of the teaching
hospital program. Usually, a resident and a student assist Rawlings
as part of their training. Other faculty frequently participate because
the university is in the process of developing an endoscopic surgery
program for service and teaching.
And Rawlings can’t help but appreciate the irony of human medicine
being tested on animals.
“Now we are doing a lot of procedures using information gained
from people,” Rawlings said. “We are lifting from the human
literature and trying to figure out which are applicable in the dog
and the cat.”
This time, Macy is reaping the rewards.
For
more information, contact rawlings@vet.uga.edu or access www.vet.uga.edu/mis.
|