Case Story: New Years Eve Emergency…
Bentley was brought to Yatton on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, after his owners noticed some unfamiliar signs and were worried about him.
Vet Mario was there and swiftly recognised the symptoms of bloat. Bloat is a very serious condition where gas fills inside the stomach, like a balloon filling up. This is very uncomfortable and often the dog will try to retch or vomit and clearly feels terrible. The more serious issue is that the gas-filled stomach can then flip over or twist. This becomes potentially disastrous almost immediately because the blood supply to the whole stomach becomes trapped or shut off. It’s one of the most serious emergencies we see as vets.
Three things need to happen to give these patients the best outcome.
1. Early recognition by owners that something’s wrong and that they follow their instinct and seek professional help asap
2. Getting to the vet quickly – we will help you – our knowledgeable reception and nursing teams know the signs and can give the necessary advice – don’t hang around!
3. Our clinical teams then proceed with the diagnostic and surgical procedures as an immediate priority.
Bentley was transferred to our Portishead practice where a team of vets and nurses worked on him straight away. This included taking X-rays to confirm the condition, then attempting to decompress the gas-filled stomach. This is initially done by passing a large tube from his mouth into his stomach under general anaesthesia. Unfortunately, the twist was so big the entrance to the stomach had become twisted closed, so we couldn’t pass the tube, and were therefore unable to relieve the gas that way. So next we decompressed him via a needle into the stomach straight through his body wall. We then proceeded to operate on him to undo the twist and get things back into the correct anatomical position. Once there, we surgically fixed the lower part of the stomach to the body wall, so that it could not twist over again in the future.
Bentley also had some heart disturbances during this surgical procedure as a direct result of the toxic effect of the lack of blood to his stomach. We were able to deal with these aspects via intravenous medication as the surgery progressed.
It was a very difficult surgery but thanks to the early recognition of the issue, and the early surgical intervention, we were able to save him.
We are delighted to say that Bentley has since gone on to make a complete recovery.
I’d like to point out too that this all occurred on the evening of New Year’s Eve, when most of the attending staff should have finished for the day and gone home. They didn’t do this and stayed on to assist. This makes me extremely proud of this caring, dedicated bunch of people without whom we could simply not provide the service we do for our patients.
