Featured Case Studies

This month’s case features a little cross breed puppy called Bailey. He was first seen at the practice as an emergency having just fallen off a chair.  He was acutely painful on feeling his right back leg and was not able to carry any weight on it.  Fortunately, though, he was very bright and bouncy and the rest of the clinical examination showed no significant abnormalities.  We were suspicious that he may have fractured his leg so we took x-rays to establish what damage he had done.

The x-rays showed a fracture of the tibia in his right hind leg as can be seen in the first photo.  The fracture is described as an oblique spiral fracture with mild displacement.  This means the fracture line is at an oblique angle to the bone and spirals around the bone.  Fortunately the two fracture fragments were fairly close together as if they are widely displaced it can make it much more difficult to align the fragments properly and get a perfectly straight leg.  Bailey was also lucky that the fracture wasn’t anywhere near to the end of the bone.  In young animals the bones grow across growth plates at either end of the bone and if they are disrupted by a fracture this can cause problems with growth later on.  However, due to the fracture type it did require surgery to repair.

Bailey had surgery the following day and the fracture was repaired using an External Skeletal Fixator (ESF).   This is where pins are drilled through the bone on either side of the fracture site and the fragments held together using a rod on the outside of the animal’s leg.  There are lots of advantages to using this method over more invasive methods such as placing a plate on the bone.  An ESF causes much less disruption to blood supply and trauma to the area allowing the fracture to heal more easily and Bailey to recover much more quickly.  It is also very light and much less bulky than casts or dressings so allowing Bailey to have a more comfortable time during healing.

Bailey went home the following day and spent the next four weeks on strict ‘bed rest’ which as any lively puppy owner will know can be challenge.  After the four weeks were up we repeated the x-rays as shown in the picture below and were happy that the fracture had healed fully.  This meant we could remove the pins as they had done their job.  This is another advantage of this repair method.  If we have to leave implants in place they can cause irritation as the animal grows and as the animal ages they may loosen and have to be removed.  In order to allow Bailey’s fracture to strengthen now the pins had been removed he was on restricted exercise for the next two weeks and most importantly not allowed to jump up in this time.

Finally though Bailey has been allowed to resume his normal puppy behaviour and seems to be delighted with his fixed leg!