Buddy was seen at Poulsbo Animal Clinic as a 9-week-old puppy. He had been attacked by another dog and received life-threatening injuries. The owner first took him to a local emergency practice where he was stabilized. They determined that his R femur and tibia were fractured during the attack and they advised amputation (they even had a discussion about euthanasia). Not wanting his young puppy to lose his leg, he found our website and saw that we perform orthopedic surgery. Buddy was examined and we had a long discussion about his options. The owner decided that he would like us to attempt to repair the fractures and save the leg.
On the pre-op x-ray images, you can easily see the fractures.
The fractures were repaired using bone plates and intramedullary (IM) pins. The IM pins go down the center of the bones. They greatly increase the strength of the repair, by as much as 10-fold.
The black arrows on the second (lateral) image show the growth plates. The bones grow in length in these locations. Note how close the surgical implants are to the growth plates; the pin in the tibia even crosses the upper growth plate. The staple lines show that there were two separate surgical approaches: on the medial side to repair the tibia and the lateral side for the femur.
Buddy was kept quiet during the recovery and the owner was very diligent about giving him his medications. It is clear in his 8-week post-op x-ray images that he healed very well. Today he is completely normal and uses his leg as if it were never injured!
The arrows again point to the growth plates, but look how far they are from the implants now!
