[Dailydrool] Vet Visit

[Esther Strom]

Synthia,

Healing drool coming to Maya. If you're concerned about bloat but don't want to go the abdominal surgery route, talk to your vet about balloon gastropexy (also called gastronomy.) It's usually performed on dogs who, for one reason or another, are high-risk for full-on surgery. It's also considered the weakest of the possible attachments, but as far as I'm concerned it's way better than nothing.

It's also a pleasant side-effect of having a feeding tube - Waldo had a tube a few years ago after his back surgery, and when he was x-rayed several months later at the emergency clinic the vet asked when he had his stomach tacked. I didn't know it had been, until she explained that scar tissue forms around the balloon, effectively tacking the stomach to the abdominal wall.

http://www.kifka.com/Elektrik/Bloat.htm#Surgery

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Esther Strom
Visit my Etsy shop: http://HookedByEsther.etsy.com



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He also talked me out of doing the gastropexy (stomach tack) on Maya along with her spay. We had a long discussion, and having had a St Bernard whose stomach torsed, I was pretty convinced I wanted to do it. But, taking a 15 minute spay into a much longer procedure with 3-4x the incision, add in the risk of complications from adhesions or other potential risks, we opted not to do it. He said if we did it on males and females routinely, then that's one thing. If the only reason to do it is because "she's under anesthesia anyway"...well, he didn't think that was good enough. And after discussion, I agreed. He did promise to let me know if they start doing it laparoscopically (which he thought was a great idea, by the way, but not aware that it's being done).