Corgi Saved With One Of A Kind Prosthetic Limb | The Bionic Vet | Pets & Vets

[Music] all right guys let's get these radiographs done quickly let's go on oh good boy noel fitzpatrick is a pioneering veterinary surgeon he's pushing the boundaries of both animal and human medicine give a cat two new feet done noel is a medical engineer he rebuilds animals using the most sophisticated technology available people have no idea absolutely no idea whatsoever what we do together with his team he's having to make life and death decisions every day if you start along this route of trying to do heroic things for the betterment of the dog then you have to be prepared to draw the line alongside the drills spanner's ratchets and implants his surgical center in surrey is crammed full of millions of pounds worth of equipment that rivals anything you'd see in a major hospital to take the best technology in the world integrated with the team that genuinely care that's special pets are referred here from all over the country for many of these animals and their owners knowl is their last hope he truly will become bionic [Music] the mornings at the referral center are taken up um can with consultations down right now so the time now is what plus ten so probably be with us about 11. and today noel is assessing the condition of yanto a nine-year-old corgi his owner jillian has brought him 175 miles from staffordshire in the desperate hope that noel can help him he's my only companion my husband's died yanta was part of my life i know one day i've got to lose him he's nine now but has you admit isn't it oh yes and if we can go on a few more years yanto is riddled with arthritis and to make matters worse an infected cancerous growth is severely affecting one of his legs he clearly has some big issues he's collapsed down on this wrist so he's actually walking on his wrist rather than on his toes and the tumor is eating away his foot as well for jillian yanto has been a lifeline and the thought of losing him is unbearable no is yanto's only hope now what we'll do is we'll just look at these images and i'll just talk you through what what the tumor looks like okay now as we scroll through you will see this tumor here look at how it's eroding into the bone and that's the tumor there that's literally eating the foot away now we've done a ct scan of his chest we've done x-rays of his chest so far we can't see any spread of the tumor if we get it off it might not recur that's our hope okay that's all we can help for and try but there is a possibility it could come back but i think given the level of technology we have now we should be able to save him hopefully right okay all right many dogs can survive on three legs but for yanto simply amputating his cancerous leg is not an option because he has severe arthritis in his other legs he'd be unable to walk nor decides that there's only one way to save yanto's life and that's to amputate the diseased pore and replace it with a new prosthetic foot it'll be another pioneering bionic procedure but knoll can't go ahead with the operation until he receives a custom-made implant putting the fate of a beloved pet into someone else's hands is emotionally very unsettling so it's going to be an anxious wait for jillian but for owners like christine and her seven month old puppy jolly who was brought in for a major operation a week ago the surgeries behind them [Music] jolly has a bone deformity in his front legs so you can see how much of a flipper foot he's got there his foot is not moving in a straight line with his body it should be over here but it's not it's way out here so it's twisted out that way and rotated jolly's condition was severe and in a unique surgical procedure noel cut and realigned the bones in both of jolly's legs securing them with pins and specially constructed frames you can see here where the elbow and the wrist are moving now in a straight line the frames will allow him to walk whilst the bones are healing and hopefully will be removed in a few weeks time how are you liking your new straight legs jolly's owner christine hasn't seen him since the operation hello pedro can you come with me please oh goodness medicine in your pocket let's go outside come on then go good boy oh impressive what a clever boy you are so clever okay good as you can see it hasn't taken any of his spirit away so that's good that's very uncomplicated yeah so let's bring him outside for now christine can take jolly home to continue his recovery so that's fine now do you have any questions or is that all clear i think it's all very clear i'm allowed to take him out of the house no more than six to ten minutes maybe six years yeah yeah yep no jumping absolutely no jumping no rushing around yeah okay good so when do you want to see him again one week i will say goodbye sorry my pleasure take care all right mate take it easy i don't have a munchkin to say goodnight to now goodnight see you later all right thanks a lot when most patients come to the center they're referred with case notes and wear appropriate x-rays but today a patient whose background is a bit of a mystery has arrived and no information from the referring vet has come through to senior surgeon michael hamilton we haven't got the extras sent through and we haven't got a history sent through either so there's some issue with the vets um email or fax jenny from charity dogs trust has been caring for a little abandoned jack russell terrier jade they know her name and age from her microchip but have been unable to locate an owner she was brought in with a damaged leg by a dog warden a few weeks ago she was actually found as a stray in wales we take quite a few strained abandoned dogs from wales every week and so we obviously don't know the history we don't know how long she's been like it but we're guessing about two weeks now jenny has been told that eight-year-old jade has a dislocated elbow okay right we've got jade please come on in at first glance michael isn't at all sure that her injury is that severe you're walking pretty good yes not bad oh maybe it's maybe it's not a dislocated elbow maybe maybe it's an elbow that's that was dislocated that isn't dislocated anymore because that is a dog walking extremely well to having a dislocated elbow the problem is in her right front leg and michael wants to see what happens when she's running just a tiny bit slower on the way back there's the nod so she's nodding on the left which means that she's lame on the right because they throw their weight back on the as they put down the saw one yeah she's a bit more lame there but i still think that looks way too good to be out unless she's popped it out someone's popped it in and it's kind of you know it's just kind of the aftermath of all the injured ligaments and things so come back in then we'll have a little feel but when he examines jade's elbow closely he's in for a shock you know what that does that does feel out that's that's how i can feel that out well there you go my god not only is the joint dislocated but because jade's been suffering from it for several weeks it may be chronic it's quite unusual injury because where the elbow works you've got this um little hook on the top of the ulna there and that little hook clips into that little hole there yeah that's what kind of gives you the hinge joint of your elbow and so you need to kind of have that hook disengaged and then take a bang to actually looks at your elbow so it's quite unusual injury um and i guess most ones i've seen have been in much larger dogs maybe just that she's she's kind of you know she has to carry a few kilograms around the place but it's definitely how she's leaning in this one yeah it's definitely out and she's and you can feel that she's lost a little bit of muscle on that side as well now so um yeah i mean it's the kind of thing that's not going to go in on its own to assess whether she might need surgery michael needs to take a number of x-rays so jade's admitted right well let's uh let's get her in then jenny won't even be able to begin to look for a new home for her until her dislocated elbow is back in place and she's well on the way to recovery it's the day of yanto's operation his unique implant which has taken a week to make and perfect has finally arrived the nine-year-old corgi is owner jillian's sole companion and she's feeling very anxious about the groundbreaking surgery he's about to undergo i'm not sleeping but still it's his best chance isn't it you need to get worried hey the procedure that knoll's offering yanto has only been carried out on two other dogs before one of these was a nine-year-old american bulldog called cole [Music] and in a world first on both back legs of a cat oscar whose feet were torn off by a combine harvester the implant is called an itap intraosseous means in the bone transcutaneous it means across the skin amputation prosthesis means we're going to chop something off and put on a new one yanto presents a particular challenge noel has never attempted to use an implant in a dog with such short and stubby legs before he knows that the stakes are high [Music] this is the implant it's a very very finely designed custom built piece of equipment as you can see it's specifically developed for his particular arm yeah the problem i'm going to have is making sure that the bone exactly fits this yeah it needs to be tight enough to hold this implant solid yes but not so tight that i fracture the bone as i pop it in jillian says a tearful goodbye she knows that if the operation fails yanto will have to be put to sleep it's a big thing to leave your dog when they mean such a lot to you knowles passionate about offering animals the same opportunities that are afforded to humans it's a shared belief that runs throughout his entire team if we can offer these services to our human patients because we feel that it's the best to bring a person back to doing the things that they like to do the most um then i think then why can't we offer the same things to bringing our animals back to doing the things that they like to do the most and give them the best quality of life that way it's all through no it's through his vision and they're not done anywhere else in the world and so it's hard to justify if you're doing something that nobody else is doing but it's always done it's always done with the with the animals best interest in mind yanto's operation begins to make sure that yanto's tumor is completely removed null will begin by amputating his diseased foot [Music] this is the tumor here enveloping that toe of that toe on that toe this is the collapsed wrist there you can see it's collapsed so i'm going to chop it the skin here and i'm going to pull the skin back to leave us plenty to cover the eye tab and then we'll chop the bone got it chris hall of skin bag the role of the assistant is very important in these operations because chris is bringing the leg up into a position where i can see it properly and he is squeezing the leg really tightly so that the blood vessels don't bleed now knoll can drill a hole in yanto's radius into which the implant is inserted [Music] its final position is crucial once we got the implant in more than three quarters of the way there's no going back we can't pull it out again so this is the critical point and if we're going to fracture the bone we're going to fracture it now too much force will cause the bone to crack and the operation will be a failure a couple more taps and hopefully we're in okay looks pretty good the implant is specially designed so that janto's bone can fuse to it and become part of his body at the point at which the implant protrudes from yanto's leg there's a uniquely engineered umbrella that enables the skin to bond to it forming a permanent seal against infection if the operation is a success a prosthetic foot will be attached to the implant in five or six weeks time but for now knoll has to engineer a frame made up of arches nuts and bolts and keep it in place with metal pins this will protect the implant until noel can establish whether yanto's bone and skin will fuse and bond to it i love it when a plan comes together let's go to x-ray [Music] that's something i can mark off the list now your dog an artificial leg done [Music] the x-rays revealed that so far everything has gone to plan but it will be several weeks before they know whether the implant has been a success and jillian can finally take yanto home [Music] abandoned jack russell terrier jade who is found wandering in the streets of wales by a dog warden has now had a leg x-rayed and it confirms what michael suspected a dislocated elbow this thought should all be sitting underneath this bone there so that's dislocated to the outside the challenge is going to be because it's been out for three weeks we think at least um it's trying to get the thing back in again um you know i've had a little feel of it and i mean it's crunching about but there's there's just no way i'm going to get that back in so we're going to have to open this up surgically and probably remove a lot of scar tissue and just actually physically put the thing back in again jade undergoes surgery to correct it and to make sure that it stays in place and when michael operates he finds a number of signs that indicate that jade has been wandering about with a chronic injury for much longer than the past two or three weeks when we got in there so just to kind of show you this is just a little plastic model this little notch thing here it's kind of what gives you the hinge of the elbow joint that kind of clips into that little hole there look like that and that kind of gives you the hinge or elbow joint now when we were doing the surgery you couldn't really see these landmarks at all we had to kind of almost kind of dig out and kind of make ourselves a little notch because it was just kind of full of scar tissue and fibrous tissue i think that's been out for many many many weeks if not several months that would probably explain why she was as um as good as she was because she's just been out for so long she's just kind of compensated because i started to get used to it a little bit yeah with the surgery behind her thoughts can now turn to finding jade some new and loving owners see if we can get her home which is the whole point hopefully somebody will want you jade but first the team work hard on building up her muscle mass and getting jay back to full mobility this involves an intensive program of hydrotherapy and physiotherapy once again jade's courage shines through and she's finally well enough to go home and the good news is she's now been re-homed and is living happily with a family in oxfordshire jolly bailey after the operation to correct his deformed legs jolly seemed to be making good progress at home but today a worried christine has brought him back just a few hours ago he shrieked with pain and she fears that something has gone drastically wrong junior surgeon tim sparrow is first to examine him there wasn't any jumping or sudden movement he didn't fall back slowly screams i felt so guilty poor little fella let's have a look kind of do you do you i do you know if one leg is more affected than the other or you just i can't tell because his gate is so strange yeah okay tim wants to make sure that the pins in jolly's legs haven't moved or even broken so he sends him through to x-ray an anxious christine's beginning to wonder whether she should have put jolly through the surgery in the first place i feel really guilty actually it was my decision that he should have this operation and my reasoning was that he's a lovely lovely puppy and he's probably got 17 years of life and if he could have that little bit of suffering now would mean that he could have a really good life and be a wonderful companion um but when i heard him scream i felt really selfish and all i could think was that no puppy should have that much pain [Music] jolly has been sedated and the team set about x-raying his legs [Music] but in spite of christine's concerns the images revealed that everything is still in place and all the pins are correctly aligned looking quite good so it's possibly just a jar injury or a little bit of a bruise injury from um movement of the of the frame so what i think we'll do is keep jolly in for a week and make sure that jolly's cage rested and kept quiet and provide plenty of pain relief it'll also give the owner a break from having to look after jolly all the time christine leaves jolly in good hands and just to make sure that there's nothing wrong he settled down in the kennels for a few days observation it's now five weeks since yanto's operation to give him a new foot everything hinged on a bionic implant becoming part of his body now his frame has been removed and the team are thrilled that as hoped yanto's skin and bone have successfully bonded and fused with the implant so we're going to take these stitches out now but you can see here if we move the eye tap that the skin moves with it because the skin has grown onto the metal that was never possible before so that is quite amazing it is amazing that skin can grow onto metal and form a permanent seal that should never break down [Music] and it has allowed us to achieve an entirely new horizon of saving a leg now knoll can attach a prototype of yanto's new prosthetic foot we're going to have to see how he uses it over the next few days the problem we have at the moment is we don't know what shape this should be so we're going to see how he wears his soul and then we're going to make him a proper soul to go on top to absorb the force yanto's taken up to the kennels to recover over the next few days the prototype foot will allow the team to see whether he begins to adapt to it and more importantly whether he can actually master walking on it only then will they know whether it's a success and he can be happily reunited with his owner jillian get you back to your mom now at the practice the team are always prepared for the unexpected but today senior surgeon sarah girling is faced with a very unusual patient a volunteer from a local wildlife charity steve preston has arrived with a bar now whose survival is being threatened by a broken wing oh you're already dinky well he's tiny and he's gorgeous though he's lovely so do you know what happened um but he's he was found near a railway line so all we know is that he's got a break in his wing okay um which obviously he's uh you know for his hunting and everything else it's quite critical he gets fixed as you can see there it is okay he's feeling very sorry for himself we're very very really if at all i don't think we've seen about now here that's for sure goes to the countryside he's gorgeous sarah needs to establish how extensive the damage is before she can recommend any treatment okay we'll leave the pocketbook in his box and we'll go and get him comfortable this will involve anesthetizing the bar now in order to take an x-ray but birds are particularly sensitive to anaesthetic and unless it's administered very carefully it can kill such a skilled procedure needs all the experience of the two head nurses josie and emma respiratory system's very different from dogs and cats they have air sacs the metabolism is far higher as well so they metabolize the drugs quicker so there's a greater risk of anaesthetic depth and that's why we give them gas rather than injectables because it's very easily reversible sarah is called away to check up on another patient so noel picks up where she left off [Music] how's the anaesthetic yeah it's fine no problems do you get the tubing okay yep tube is fine that's good when was the last time you need to there's a board two and a half years ago well done you that's great so what's happening here you feel that bump there that's that's a healing callus a wild animal will naturally tuck the leg or arm up like that and and the reason they do that is so that has an opportunity to heal so they don't use it so this owl would not have been fluffing around anyway and this owl has been a very sensible owl and allowed it to heal actually so let's look at the x-rays so we can see here where the arm has been fractured in several pieces there's a piece here and there's two pieces here the callus is right here and it's going to coat those fracture edges in a fibrous tissue that will hold them together and that fibrous tissue will gradually become bone there are situations where you make the decision to operate and there are situations where you make the decision not to operate and the decision here is definitely not to operate because mother nature is doing the job for us i would say i'll probably take six weeks or so we should be fine the barnell was returned to the wildlife center and was released a couple of months later it only took a day or two for yanto to adapt to his new foot and now for the first time his owner jillian can see him walking pain-free and be reunited with her sole companion come on then mate who's out here there we go oh yeah there we go there we go look at you what's been happening to you so what do you think [Music] it's great you're okay yeah thank you all right thank you so i think so far so good yeah oh my little boy waited for this day the thing about it is that this is just the first foot of many because once we get him to use his leg with this particular foot we'll develop a better foot for him once we know how he's going to use the leg oh yeah so well done for your bravery and tenacity and going through it it's been hard it's been a journey it has but you still have him at the end of the day yeah yeah well done okay good good [Music] and yanto's not the only patient for whom treatment at the practice has been both life-saving and life-changing [Music] it's just six months since puppy jolly underwent the major surgery to straighten his deformed legs and his owner christine can hardly believe the transformation his legs are now straight and he's more than a match for his sister freckles he runs faster than his litter mates he runs faster than a lot of dogs in the park he absolutely enjoys life he has no qualms no fears no trepidation about anything he's a brave comfortable dog very relaxed very happy no one would ever guess that jolly had had a major rebuild on his front legs [Music] quite amazing and i think we made the right decision [Music] the referral center has now been up and running for 12 months and in that time noel and his team have continued to break new ground in veterinary medicine hundreds of pets have had their lives transformed and as the practice heads into its second year knoll is more certain than ever about the motivation that's brought him this far my job is to push medical science to its absolute limit as long as it's ethically and morally right to give dogs and cats and animals generally a right to life it's a very bright future if human doctors and veterinary doctors work together to treat all creatures with the same respect the same level of technology the same options ultimately it's a decision you make and i think that it's the decision of a civilized world that cares about unconditional love and a decision we should make [Music] it's just my opinion take it or leave it but that's what drives me [Music] you

Channel: Pets & Vets

Views: 1,095

Rating: 4.891892 out of 5

Keywords: Animals, Animal Documentary, documentaries, nature documentaries, nature documentary, noel fitzpatrick vet, noel fitzpatrick, noel fitzpatrick supervet, The Bionic Vet, The bionic vet season 1, the bionic vet season 1 episode 6, the bionic vet full episodes, veterinary, veterinary assistant, veterinary technician, Pets & Vets, Vet, Pet, Corgi, Barn Owl, vets saving pets tv show, vets saving animals, vets saving pets, full documentary, full documentary HD

Id: w5H2X27Ilys

Length: 28min 51sec (1731 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021