MRIs, CT scans and blood donations... it’s a dog’s life
High-tech medical equipment is saving the lives of pets
CAT scans are playing a key role in saving the lives of pets in Ireland as veterinary care increasingly mirrors human medicine.
The pet boom, which was spurred by the pandemic has more Irish people take on four-legged friends – and when they get ill they are now treated with MRI scans, CAT (or CT) scans and blood transfusions.
One of the country’s leading vets, Liam Moriarty, the co-founder of the Linnaeus-owned My Vet practice in Dublin, said the CT scans are picking up conditions that would have previously been left undiagnosed.
‘Our big new thing is a CAT scan, we have one in the clinic in Lucan and we do a lot of CT scans for ourselves, and other clinics around the country will send us patients to have a scan,’ he said.
‘You can diagnose things you couldn’t know before. We had one case where there was a foreign body in the dog’s nose, we thought it might have been a tumour, but it turned out to be a little piece of twig that was lodged up its nose, you could see it in the scan.
‘The dog went back and had surgery to have it removed once they knew what it was. You also get a lot of cancer diagnoses, you can see the lungs much more clearly and we often find tumours in the lungs and elsewhere in the body.’
Mr Moriarty believes the advances will lengthen the life expectancy of pets.
‘Veterinary is becoming more specialised now. We can send the images to someone in the UK or America we get back a report from them, so there is a lot more colocation with vets worldwide,’ he said. ‘The standard of care that pets are getting now is phenomenal. We’re seeing huge benefits. Pets are living longer and they are cared for so much better.’
However, CT scans don’t come cheap. At the My Vet practice, the price for cat scans starts at €650 and up to €1,200 at UCD Veterinary College, depending on the size of the animal.
The CT was put into work last year in the practice in Lucan when one of the team’s dogs collapsed. Twelve-year-old puggle Mindy, who belongs to his colleague Jenny Darmstadter, fell ill. A CT scan and an MRI showed her abdomen was full of blood. Before she was rushed into surgery, Mr Moriarty’s three-year-old golden retriever, Molly, donated a pint of blood. It was not an ordinary surgery for the team, as both dogs were part of the furniture at the My Vet practice, which allows pets to go to work with the staff.
Mindy’s survival from an extremely rare tumour that had started to spontaneously bleed has astounded vets at the practice.
‘In all my time in veterinary, it’s probably one of the most miraculous recoveries we’ve ever seen,’ said Mr Moriarty
A key part of the survival for the haemorrhaging dog was the donor blood.
‘We had Molly delivered and Molly happily gave up a pint of blood for a bit of tinned dog food,’ he said. ‘Luckily for us, Molly let us take the blood and Mindy is a much smaller dog, so when Molly gives her a pint of blood, for an adult it’s like getting two pints of blood.’
He said the vets feared the worst going into theatre as the dog was ‘bleeding out’ rapidly.
‘Jenny is a vet with 14 years’ experience, so she knew better than anyone this was most likely the end of the road for Mindy. Her
‘Pint of blood for some tinned dog food’
‘When it’s your own dog, it’s difficult’
husband came in and they said their goodbyes.
‘We put her under anaesthetic, but we didn’t think she would wake up. It was around 8pm by the time we started surgery and everybody stayed. The whole place was rooting for her. When it’s your own dog it’s a difficult one because it’s an emotional thing.’
The team of six operated until close to midnight, eventually locating a rare bleeding growth on the adrenal gland next to a major blood vessel.
He said: ‘The next day Mindy was extremely lethargic, and I feared the worst. Very gradually, over the coming days, she regained her strength and after a few weeks was looking much better. We have repeated ultrasound and CT scans and there is no sign of the tumour coming back, so Mindy is truly a miracle patient.
‘Any day I come in now and I see Mindy and she’s in such great form, I feel so proud. It was great, it was our whole team, including our dog giving a blood transfusion to one of our own.’