A whizz few days.

Cruciate Sutures for Skin Closure

The first thing to start my blog off is to remind myself of the following video and suture pattern. My vets mainly use this technique to close skin- it looks nicer and it holds the skin better :). They use a continuous simple stitch for the muscle layer so far I believe. 

Seen a lot of things of which I need to write a lot of it up from my book. On the first note the tetralogy turned out to be just a ventricular septal defect- still not brilliant but perhaps a tad better than the other prognosis from the scan. Perhaps I'd better start with today and then update on other things later on- maybe tomorrow. 

Today I saw a toy poodle. The poodle had some kind of abdominal muscle hernia which was easily palpable so came in overnight with fluids and a blood test. The dog was given vetergesic (buprenorphine) was a premed alongside ACP. The main induction drug this practice uses seems to be propofol. The dog had already been diagnosed with a ovarian adenoma (cyst???) before the surgery so the bloods were slightly essential. In surgery the dog had about 300ml of a straw brown watery fluid, adhesions between some of the gut walls to the kidneys, a slightly rounded and small liver and a mottled, nodular spleen. Not sure overall what is wrong with the dog as tests cannot be carried out. An interesting case to watch!

Next, there was a dew claw removal on a collie which had ripped the nail somehow. I didn't see much of this operation as I was busy watching the toy poodle. The post mortem on a cat that came in revealed a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with secondary pulmonary oedema. The walls of the heart were visibly thickened. No other lesions were seen at the post mortem. I also got to practice a bit of suturing today- hence the link to the video above. So exciting! In addition I've been tutored in giving a few basic injections- all of which could have gone better but I'm hoping my technique will improve with time. 

Other interesting things about the inpatients today included a pigeon which had a broken leg, a bichon frise castration, rabbit molar rasp and a cat in respiratory distress from earlier in the week which appeared to be doing a lot better :). Interesting consultations today including a case of atopic dermatitis in a  Japanese Akita, chemotherapy injections for multicentric canine lymphoma in a rottweiler and also drugs for arthritis in a WHWT with suspected beginning Cushing's disease.