The team at Vetwest South Perth recently had the pleasure of treating a very brave patient by the name of Lily and they decided to nominate her as our patient of the month for June.
When Lily was in to be desexed a few months back her owners had noticed that something was not quite right with the way she was walking. While she was under her general anaesthetic, Dr Cirsten took a few x-rays of her front legs and found that she had canine elbow dysplasia (elbow incongruity). This basically means that the end of Lily’s ulnar bone sat too high relative to her radius, due to the ulna growing too slow. This step or incongruity (see photo) was causing discomfort as she moved or walked on this front leg. In a normal elbow joint, these two bones would line up perfectly.
We allowed Lily a little bit of time to grow and then when she re-presented back at the clinic at the end of May, Dr Aimee and Dr Cirsten put together a plan to surgically repair her issue.
The surgery Lily required is called a partial ulnar ostectomy and bone pinning. The surgery itself involved cutting out a small piece of bone from the end of Lily’s ulnar and then passing a metal pin from the top of the ulnar, through the middle of the bone and down through that space and into the bottom of the ulnar to anchor it there. This will then allow the radius to grow unhindered by the ulna and eliminate the ‘step’ present in the pre-op radiograph shown.
Lily’s surgery was performed on Monday the 10th June and so far Lily has been recovering well. She spent the night with us after her procedure was completed for monitoring and pain relief via an intravenous drip and was discharged the next day.
Lily is recovering well so far and is behaving herself amazingly well for a young dog recovering from orthopaedic surgery! She will have to sport a rather fetching bandage on her front leg for a few weeks until we are ready to assess how it is healing but our fingers are crossed that very soon she will be enjoying a painless gait like all her friends.
For more information on Lily’s case or if you have any concerns about your own animal experiencing pain similar to Lily’s please call Vetwest South Perth on 9404 1140.
