Small animal surgery at Dr Val's

  Surgeries!

Wednesday 26/9/12

 Today Dr Liz from Oregan in the US, and I did 8 surgeries (2 neuters and 6 spays) and yes, I got my birthday wish, I completed a whole spay and neuter, solo. Most of the others I did half of, and Liz did the other half, as I am not very efficient at it yet.

For the vets interested out there, here is some info on doing surgery on an office desk :) We did it all 'clean' as opposed to aseptic. It was 'field work' so we did the surgeries on the only space available, on someone's desk in the CLIDE* office! We gave the dogs Acepromazine first to chill them out a little, then a mix of ketamine and Valium (50% of each in the required dose, IV) and then gave half of that dose again once the dog was prepped for surgery and we were beginning and then as needed, we topped up with Propofol.

 

 On the field, as they say, you use whatever you have and these all worked really well! The animals went down and woke up really smoothly. Antibiotics were given afterwards because the surgery was 'clean' not aseptic and because they will most likely be rolling around in bacteria-ridden dirt before too long.

The cats were given what is called 'kitty magic' - I think the drug companies came up with that one- which is 0.1ml each of Torbugesic, Ketamine and Dexdomitor for every 5kg. Ooh and I learnt a new trick it's called the 'clove-hitch knot' and I've used it with tying up horses and boats before but never seen it in a surgery, so that was cool to learn. Hopefully we'll get to do some more next week as well and when we go to Karamoja on Wed next week, there as well :)

 *CLIDE stands for Community Livestock-Integrated Development (consultancy), it has four offices, two in Karamoja, one here in Soroti and one in Kampala. It is another Christian Veterinarian Mission outlet here in Uganda.