Fascinating

The last couple of weeks I have been in cardiology and this week in the Antec lab and parisitology lab of the teaching hospital.  Yesterday we echoed a dog that had a positive antigen test for heart worm adults.  The ultrasound image showed the worms in the right atrium and the right ventricle and one in between the two, through the tricuspid valve.  The dog was small (chihuahua) therefore the worms were large about as long as a #2 pencil and about as thick as a piece of horse hair.  For a small dog the worms were a big problem.  Seeing the worms on ultrasound one day then spending the next day in the parasitology lab performing a modified knotts procedure on ten patient specimens helped sink in the information.  A knotts procedure is taking 1ml of patient blood with 9ml of 2% formalin and centrifuging the sample.  Then pouring off the supernatant (top fluid portion), then taking 1 drop of new methylene blue dye and stirring it with the sediment (button) on the bottom of the test tube.  Taking the mixture and placing it on a slide with a coverslip then viewing it under a microscope is the next step.  The modified knotts' purpose is to differentiate two parasites (microfilaria) that circulate in the blood.  The most common one that is pathogenic is heart worm or Dirofilaria immitus.  The second that can be confused with dirofilaria is Acanthocheilonema (Dipetolenema) reconditum, it is not pathogenic.  Performing the procedure, we actually saw a dirofilaria microfilaria in the blood of a dog that had a negative antigen test.  Two reasons why this could happen the test was faulty or the young dog acquired the microfilaria from its mother through the umbilical.  Microfilaria can live up to two years in the blood.  The only way that the animal can be infested with the adults is if a mosquitoe ingests blood and grows into the next stage which takes two weeks and then drinks blood from another animal and passes the microfilaria to another animal which then those microfilaria grow to the next life cycle and become adults that migrate to the heart.  Google image heartworm and you will see that these worms are pretty nasty.  Now imagine those in your pet dog.  This can all be prevented by giving your dog heartworm preventative.  I will now step down from my soapbox.

Caution may be disturbing

The Dog that I wrote about in my last posting, the one that was tick infested and had the waterry blood was radiographed and had metal lucency in the stomach.  The ticks were sent to the parasitology lab to be tested for tick borne diseases.  This next week I will do is a rotation in cardiology.  I am looking forward to helping the cardiologist all week.  The pictures to follow are of my first week, that I spent in large animal.  I went to the diagnostics lab to see the necropsy of a bull that had abscesses show up on the ultrasound the doctors performed.  They were riddled through out his GI system and reproductive tract.  While I was there they started investigating the reason why this horse had neurological symptoms.  The pictures after the bot larvae pictures are of the insides of the bull.

horse being prepared for necropsy.  Euthanized because of neurological disease. 

Bot fly larva in the horses stomach. Not the reason for neurological signs but a very interesting finding.

Horses stomach with bot fly larva.  The adult flies land and lay eggs on the hair of the horse.  The eggs on the hair are small and are difficult to get off the hair shaft.  The horse grooms itself and ingests the egg. 

Large hair twine ball found in one of the stomach compartments of the bull, not an uncommon finding.  Cows are indiscriminate eaters.  Often junk finds it's way into the stomach of cows. 

abscess cavity on the wall of the omasum of the bull.  The four compartments of a cows stomach are the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum.

another large abscess on the outside wall of the omasum

The viscera

abscess on the testicle and a small one on the epididimus(spelling?)

purulent material (pus) from one of the abscesses in the GI

The poor guy himself

lobuled kidney rather than the bean shaped one of humans

reproductive tract of the bull

If you enlarge this photo you can see the villi of the rumen. 

I hope you enjoy my post if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them.  Sometimes when I write this blog I miss alot of what I am experienceing.  Questions help me flesh it all out.  So again if anyone has questions I would love to tell you more.  I am mostly focusing on the large animal side of my experiences, because that is what I am more interested in, but I do have many small animal stories that need some encouragement to compound on.

Curious Cases

Dexter from first week of internship

Dexter third week of internship came back with stifle joint swollen Surgeon did arthroscopy and flushed joint

Sleeping Longhorn in for penile prolapse. (this is what Dexter will look like when he grows up)

Soaking Longhorns penis in bucket of dilute iodine.  His penis was packed with sugar to decrease swelling, so it would hopefully ascend back in the sheath

Tuft the paint horse with abscessed right eye

Tuft after enucleation of eye and closure.  The slits were to slacken the skin around the orbit, because it was a tight closure.

Tuft's removed eye

3 month old foal with angular limb deformity called valgus because the legs deviate to the lateral or left and right side respectfully of the knee.

Surgeons performing ald correction by putting screws in the knee to stop growth on the side of the knee where the legs are slanting at so the legs grow more towards the inside of the leg.  As the foal grows the legs will staighten up and hopefully lose the knock kneed appearance. 

After surgery in recovery.  The next day he went home to recuperate and grow.  The screws will be removed later when he straightens out.  But hopefull before he turns vargus or bowed legged which is the opposite spectrum of valgus or knock kneed.

I am now in the small animal side of the hospital.  This is a picture of a blood film taken from the blood of a dog named Puckett that came in for ADR or Ain't Doing Right.  He was covered in ticks to start off with.  His blood when put in the lavender top tube from the syringe was really watery like oil.  When looked at in the tube I didn't even have to spin down the tube to appreciate all the serum in the tube.  His PCV was 20%.  His Total solids was 7g/dl.  When 1 drop of blood was put on the slide to make a blood film it looked like oil.  I could hardly get a feathered edge.  When I looked at the blood smear under the microscope he had agglutination.  His RBC's looked like they were vacuolized.  Almost like air bubbles.  I can only explain it looked like oil drops instead of Red Blood Cells.  They suspect he has Lead poison although i did not see any Heinz bodies.  He was the last case of the day.  He will come back tomorrow.  The vet students told me they are going to pump him full of charcoal.  I think he needs a transfusion.  He walked out of the hospital looking lethargic.  I will try to post tomorrow about the definite diagnoses and outcome of his treatment.  This is a really intriguing (spelling?) case.  I really feel for the guy.  I was wondering if the waterry, serum like blood could be caused by an anticoagulant that the ticks re Because he was really infested with the little vampires.  Or if the ticks were secondary to the cause.  I'm curious.  Can anyone shed some light on this?  I will keep y'all posted about Puckett.

Dystocia

On friday the 8th of July, we had a mixed breed cow come in to the hospital with a difficult parturition.  The calfs legs and tongue were sticking out of the cow's vulva.  I helped set up all the supplies.  The suction, xygen, lidocaine for the epidural.  We started pulling by putting OB chains on both legs, wrapped above the fetlocks and half hitched below the carpuses.  The calf was pulled out until its hips were stuck.  The calf was hanging out the back of the cow.  He was about 150 lbs.  He was dead, so the clinician decided to do a fetotomy.  We used gigli wire and sawed the calf just before the hips, which by the way was really beautiful he had a white face with a grey body.  The upper of its body lay on the ground as one of the students place the sharp wire between the calves pelvis and sawed it apart.  As soon as all of the fetus was on the ground the cow was given oxytocin for uterine contractions to expell the placenta.  Oxytocin also helps with milk letdown and helps with mothering up.  I placed the fetus in doubled garbage bags and placed it on the ranchers trailer.  My only guess he wanted it for was to hunt for cayotes.  During pulling the calf out of the cow she layed down.  Getting her to stand up was a challenge.  She was week in the hind end.  She stumbled on the concrete falling down a couple of times.  She eventually stood up, and was loaded on the trailer to go back to the ranch.  That was the second dystocia in the same week.  Both did not go so well.  Working at the hospital has its perks with the good cases and the bad cases.  Last week on the 28th of June we had a longhorn calf brought in that had joint ill aka navel ill.  This is a symptom where the calf has a failure of passive transfer of antibodies and is susceptible to bacteria such as E. coli travelling up the umbilicle cord and causing septicemia of the joints.  This calf had the right tarsus affected.  We flushed out the joint with lactated ringers solution twice.  Once the first day and then the second day.  He had fibrin clots come out.  I did a Dif Quick stain of the joint fluid and found numerous neutrophils and monocytes.  White blood cells should not normally be in the synovial fluid of the joint.  Excessive neutrohils indicates infection.  Plasma was given to the calf to help with the failure of passive transfer.  After the plasma and colostrum (first milk) the calf started to become a difficult patient, which is a good sign.  he went home after five days of treatment.  I named him Dexter not sure why it sounded good at the time.  This is an example of a good ending. 

Dexter recooperating, while I lay next to him on my second day as an intern at Oklahoma State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital on my Food Animal rotation.

Food Animal Donors

                                             This is Rupert he is a resident at the OSU food animal barn.  He is a donor.  He donates blood, plasma, rumenal contents.  Every morning when I came in and checked on him he paced back and forth.  I assumed he was hungry.

                                          This is Delilah the Llama also a resident donor.  She would eat out of my hand, but she always kept a cautious eye on me.  Here she is ready to spit if I am a threat.

                                        Foster the Alpaca was a decent enough chap. 

                                           Jacob the Jakob Ram.

                                         Marshall the Boer Goat

First 2 and a half weeks of internship

I only have ten minutes left on this computer at the library.  This is my first posting on this new blog so bear with me.  Lots of procedures that we did while on my Food Animal rotation at OSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital.  Today had a cow that was brought in with dystocia.  The Doc thought it was dead so they took their time letting the vet students feel the way the calf was malpresented.  Long story short helped pull the calf.  Her head was swollen, along with her tongue sticking out.  She is unofficially brain dead possibly due to the lack of oxygen.  Later we intubated her, put her on oxygen gave her Dopram for respiratory stimulation.  To help her breath even more they put caffeine down her esophagus before we drenched her with colostrum.  Right now as I write this she is in ICU.  If she does not make remarkable improvement by the morning we will "throw in the towel," as one Dr. put it.  Hope you enjoy this posting look back from time to time for new posts.  I have to get off this computer to let other Library patrons use it.