World's First Bionic Leg Saves Cancerous Canine | The Bionic Vet | Pets & Vets

[Music] all right guys let's get these radiographs done quickly just go on all right 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 room 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] it's friday morning and for the third time this week knowles waking up at his referral center he often works into the early hours and doesn't make it home come on as noel attends to his own dog kira the practice is being prepared for another busy day the team are gearing up for a breakthrough operation which is a matter of life and death for labrador charlie he's only just over a year old but is already living on borrowed time so charlie's being walked outside by one of the nurses which is his last walk before he has surgery he's in big trouble he's got a tumor eating away the lower part of his arm here it's a very aggressive tumor it's literally munching it away uh his entire bone is gone from here to here it's just eaten away by the cancer his owners louise and mick are trying to come to terms with the fact that the cancerous tumor is threatening to cut short his young life we bought charlie because we wanted a pet for 13 14 15 years because that's the life expectancy of a labrador and he was 15 months old when we discovered that he had this tumor they were devastated and before they were referred to knoll they reluctantly thought that they'd have to give up on charlie when you initially take a dog to the vets and you find out that he's got cancer at such a young age and the vet says your dog's probably got two or three months even amputation and we recommend he gets put down you have to go with that best decision but the lifeline that was thrown was was louise's friend who'd his dog was operated on by noel and she said well have you tried norfolk's party i thought well okay it's worth it it's worth a shot knoll is now their only hope amputating a diseased limb is often viable but where possible knoll would always prefer to save as much of an animal's own limb as he can to preserve the healthy parts of charlie's leg noel has come up with a unique solution he'll cut out the tumor and replace it with a specially designed implant that exactly mirrors charlie's diseased bone [Music] this device here which is going to be implanted into charlie's leg is going to go inside his arm here in place of the tumor and it's going to become part of his body he truly will become bionic he will be part metal part dog and the metal will be indistinguishable from his own body and we've designed it to replace exactly the shape of the tumor and this technology is the key to getting the bone to stick to the metal forever it's called hydroxyapatite and this is a special meshwork that's been designed so that bone cells can literally stick on it like velcro louise and mick know that the cancer will ultimately spread and take his life but they'll do anything possible to buy him whatever extra time the pioneering new implant might give him my opinion is that we all have a choice in life and we exercise the choice and mick and i have made the choice to spend some of our savings on giving our dog the best quality of life that we had i know that people would give everything they had to to ensure their children's health is good but we just feel that the dog is that important to us that he deserves something operations like this can cost several thousand pounds noel believes that the procedure will alleviate charlie's pain and extend his young life but even he can't be sure for how long hopefully in three months from now i'd be running around the field and he'll do that until he dies and he will die of secondary cancer we'll give him chemotherapy but he'll still die of secondary cancer my job is to do the very best i can for every patient that comes here and if people say to me well you shouldn't be doing that i will say why why shouldn't i be doing that why should i not give charlie the right to a pain-free life on four legs tell me why money it's not my decision it's the honors decision ethics well charlie has a right to a pain-free life surely we have the technology we're going to apply it and we're going to rebuild his leg while noel heads down to theatre for charlie's groundbreaking surgery in reception there's a never-ending stream of new patients waiting to be seen and not all of them are dogs or cats as senior surgeon michael hamilton is about to find out a vet in nearby woking has referred zippy hey we've got zippy please come on in a chinchilla with a broken arm right guys hiya come on in right my name's michael i'm on a surgeon hello no then nice to meet you both how do i do let's have a little look then busy quite like being quietly all right little man i got you how did it happen guys he was with his mate on the shelf um his mate freaks he got spooked by something um and he sort of knocked zippy back into the cage and i think he fell awkwardly you can see the see the obvious broken bit there i don't need to really pull him around but they are tiny little bones they are literally like little matchsticks i'm just going to pop him back in there let him chill out all right mate there you go he looks in pretty good health other than his fracture doesn't it yeah so have you seen the x-rays uh yeah yeah so um that's one view of it that's basically that's the wrist joint down there that's the that's your hands that's the elbow joint they're literally like matchsticks these bones not an awful lot bigger so i mean it's going to be a bit of a bit of a fiddle to do um i haven't done one as small as this for for for a fair while we do some pretty small little dogs out of about one kilogram but i mean what does he weigh a few hundred grams for you i'm not quite sure yes right let's get him getting sorted out then okay this is our chinchilla michael is going to have to come up with an ingenious way of joining zippy's tiny broken bones back together [Music] meanwhile in theater one charlie's bionic operation is well underway knoll has cut out the tumor and the section of diseased bone it's very bloody up there's a lot of major blood vessels here and we need to be very careful we don't watch your head that we don't cut through them before knoll inserts the implant he needs to do everything possible to try to make sure that charlie's healthy bone will bond to it introducing some bone chippings taken from a donor dog will help to encourage charlie's bone to fuse with the implant and reduce the chances of rejection this is dead dog bone pulverized into small chips it's brand new in the uk so the same way as after you die you can donate your body to science these people have donated their dog which we are going to put into the joint to help the metal to grow into the living dog and we literally sprinkle it into the site that we want to now knowl has to position the implant so that it precisely bridges the gap in charlie's bone there's no room for error a little bit tight maybe a sliver too tight knoll needs to shave just a millimeter more off the bone to achieve the perfect fit with the adjustment made the implant can now be perfectly positioned we just docked the space station after two hours in theater the mechanical side of the operation has gone well i'm amazed normally i come out of theater thinking i've done less well than i thought this time coming out of thinking i'd done better than i thought i would so let's hope the post-op x-ray says the same looks like implant placement is pretty good the real advance with this particular implant is that there's two plates at the top and two plates at the bottom this has not been done before for this particular kind of cancer and the real advantage is that the two bones at the top the radius and the ulna are both linked into the prosthesis and the entire foot is linked into the prosthesis using two plates so all of these four plates should make it very very solid and hopefully hopefully fingers crossed he'll be walking on it within a couple of weeks whilst charlie's taken to the kennels to recover zippy the chinchilla is being anesthetized for the operation to repair his broken arm one of the main risks is that he'd just stop breathing under the anaesthetic and we won't have a tube down his throat so we'll be able to give him any breaths to help that um start again i think people get quite scared because we can't sort of keep as much of monitoring equipment on them as we can with our dogs and cats so we just have to be really cautious of them and really aware but mainly it's just a case of sort of minimizing his stress and the stress of everyone else around him but with the combination of drugs that we've gone for he should stay fairly asleep and it'd just be a case of monitoring his breathing and heart rate as we do with any other animal that's in here zippy's fall from a shelf has left him with breaks in the two tiny bones in his arm the radius and the ulna senior surgeon michael has rarely operated on anything quite so small where is it my god more used to seeing dog and cat limbs on the surgical drape michael's first hurdle is to locate and reveal zippy's tiny leg it's just insane right mate so if you can just kind of try and hold that like that i hope i'm still laughing at the end of this this could be just disastrous now he needs to very carefully expose the chinchilla's tiny broken bones right smallest pin we've got 0.9 millimeters michael will use pins to bridge each bone so that it can fuse and heal naturally [Music] i'm not enjoying this at all [Music] that feels really so fragile oh my god i just can't can't get a hold of it to get any purchase on it but trying to insert a metal pin without cracking such a small bone is a real test shove it that far it doesn't really matter where it goes as long as it grips [Music] there's no pin small enough to join up the smaller bone the radius so michael decides to improvise with a hypodermic needle question is how much do we want to put hold that still as best you can do it's kind of thin i've ever drilled a spinal needle into a radius before it looks straight and it's not flapping in the breeze so i think for the time being that is pretty good michael's final challenge is to apply pressure to break off the excess pin and needle without disrupting the section inside the bones and destroying everything he's achieved so far and this is a bit downward i'm gonna [Music] break its bone trying to do it straight to skin suits on that someone and a half ethel on please let's unveil him that he looks really cosy doesn't they he's really warm under there okay so there you go cool let's get an extra yeah but only an x-ray will reveal whether michael has been completely successful sweet they look absolutely enormous oh happy days man oh i'm happy with that i would have taken that pre-op i just don't want to get a reputation as being a chinchilla surgeon that's all after 50 minutes on the operating table and some deft handiwork from michael zippy's arm is almost as good as new that was fiddly that was fiddly oh you're sleeping mate aren't you sleepy sleepy once he'd slept off the anesthetic zippy was able to return home later that day and has now made a full recovery it's been two weeks since noel replaced the aggressive tumor in one year old charlie's leg with a custom designed implant and knoll is thrilled with his progress looks very nice charlie very nice your hair is going back fast as well [Music] that looks really good buddy we're done she'll take it for a walk [Music] this is really all about the new implant and how well it it has healed into that skin and bone is amazing it's amazing i mean i have never seen an imp sit down charlie i've never seen an implant do that well at uh at two weeks post-operatively the staples are still in he's perfectly comfortable i mean it really is a world first in terms of the implant technology um he's just a happy dog and as he gets used to using his new metal leg he'll be getting happier and happier i'm thrilled with it really thrilled with it he's doing great aren't you mate good boy so we're going to do his chemotherapy now because we've got to try and mop up some of the cells from the tumor that have gone elsewhere in his body it's terrible that he's so young and he's going to die of cancer eventually because he is going to die within probably within a couple of years maybe shorter maybe several months who knows but we got to give him the best quality of life we can for that period of time and i think we have done but this kind of cancer spreads rapidly and puts cells into his blood and we're going to give him some drugs into his vein now to try and mop up those cells but at the end of the day he's going to die which is a real shame until then he's got his bionic leg and he should be happy if charlie continues to make such rapid progress his owners louise and mick will soon be able to come and take him home but bone cancer isn't the major condition that causes pain and suffering to family pets the single biggest problem that noel sees at his practice is arthritis and it can affect animals of any age arthritis is the insidious disease it's the hidden menace in orthopedic practice today and arthritis destroys joints and we have to think of hundreds of mechanisms by which we can treat arthritis we've got to think beyond the box and that's exactly what knoll has done to try to help border collie sasha her arthritis is severe and one of her knees has completely disintegrated hello good morning how are you doing hello hi owner sarah has had sasha for over seven years and they're very close i've had her since eight weeks old she's not turned out what she was meant to be but she's turned out to be the most amazing dog i've had she's my first my own pet rather than a family pet so she's she's that special she's my first dog sarah finds the thought of losing sasha overwhelming but she knows that noel offers the last chance of not just keeping her alive but happy too the future looks very bleak because the knee is just going to get worse it's already in a position where i don't know as far as i'm aware it could dislocate any time in which case you know we've got a lot of problems amputation is not an option due to the other problems she has in the body so she either has surgery or we just manage it until it's time for her to go knoll is offering sasha a total knee replacement he's one of the few surgeons in the world who can offer a dog a bionic knee knee replacements are common in human patients but they've only very recently become available to animals through experts like noel this is an area in which medical advances have been shared and transferred between veterinary and human medicine something which noel feels just doesn't happen enough it's a real shame that veterinary medicine and human medicine don't work together better it's a real shame that total knee replacements in humans were developed in dogs 30 years ago that's ridiculous so the whole concept of one medicine to push forward human medicine and veterinary medicine together is something that i have dreamed about sought after wanted knew we could create and still hopefully will create with this building [Music] it's the day of the operation well i will ring you as soon as we come out of theater yeah and i'll let you know how things have gone and time for sarah to put her trust in noel and his team okay all right well done well done [Music] come on this is only the second time that a total knee replacement has been attempted on a dog in the uk before so fellow orthopedic surgeons michael and sarah have joined knoll to learn from this groundbreaking surgery all right incision now the true extent of the damage in sasha's knee is far worse than the team had thought it's a horrible horrible mess that we're just going to have to cut out we we never see knees this bad he would safely say it's the worst knee we've ever seen yeah i think you could safely say that the implant is in two parts one is metal and the other plastic in order to insert the implants null has to carefully cut and shape the diseased bone in sasha's knee the angle of the cuts is critical there's no margin for error one mistake and the new prosthetic knee simply won't function as it should we're through next knoll drills a hole in the top of the shin bone into which he'll cement the plastic part of the implant [Applause] are you ready speed is critical since the cement will dry in a matter of minutes now knoll drills a hole in the femur into which he'll insert the metal part of the implant here you can see a porous in-growth surface this is many many many many micro beads and the bone is going to grow into that it's carefully slotted into the newly cut bone tell me when you think we're right matt i think you are good just there and i'll let you know if it changes it fits exactly the contour of the bone the four surfaces that we've cut and what we're going to do now is we're going to put the knee back in place we flick the kneecap back in that's our new knee sasha's owner does have pet insurance but it's not going to cover the cost of such a high-tech operation but for noel money's not always the priority the money that's made in in referral practice for dogs and cats is made on routine procedures the high-tech procedures like this they don't make any money and that's not the point the point is you do these because it's important for the individual patient it's important for the practice to be pushing forward and giving better options i'm prepared to take that hit and i think it's important the x-rays confirm that the procedure has gone well noel's prediction is that sasha will quickly be able to regain good mobility her bone will grow into her new knee giving her a full range of pain-free movement and just two days after the operation with a little help sasha was already up and walking with her new bionic knee okay let's go through and it was time to reunite her with sarah now there we go i've got it thanks very much oh i've missed you yeah so as you can see we're supporting her here with this so that she doesn't do anything naughty isn't that right now this is a pain patch that's fantastic yeah that's right that's so she doesn't feel any pain and as you can see she's pretty perky oh yes yeah she's pretty perky she's so resilient she can sit down that's fine good so she's she's quite resilient and uh she's uh she's coping very well actually with the whole thing any questions nice it looks good yeah actually i'm i'm pretty impressed with the way the tissue is but it's uh it's actually doing really well and she's such a great girl and she rolls over on her belly and just wants a tummy tickle isn't that right yeah you just want a tummy tickle in a week or so time sarah should be able to take sasha home and she'll bring her back for regular physiotherapy and hydrotherapy sessions until she's fully recovered it's nice to see you smile [Music] on a daily basis families are regularly dropping into the center to see their pets and knoll's always there to reassure them who are you here with i've never seen i'm noel who are you here with who is this becky this is dr jamie you're zebby's owner right i see and do you want to be a vet when you grow up so what do you think that's a do you think that's an easy job what do you think would be the hardest thing would you be crying when the dogs are sick you cried when your dog was sick when he was sleeping when he was sleeping when he was knocked down yeah are you all right now though yeah surgical high five [Music] surgical high five well done we'll see you later that's the best bit of my day my life is extraordinary and wonderful in all its misery and greatness [Music] it's been two months since one-year-old labrador charlie had a cancerous tumor removed and replaced by a specially designed bionic implant in his front left leg as knoll and his owners louise and mick had hoped the implant has now become part of his body [Music] anybody who didn't know he'd had such a big operation would have no idea that he'd been operated on because he walks and runs as he did before the operation they know that one day the cancer will return but for now nothing can replace the quality of life that the groundbreaking surgery is giving him we get two or three years from fantastic if the cancer comes back early then you prepare yourself for that but there's there's no doubt in my mind that it was for the welfare of the dog and if you look at him now running about like a complete idiot then it's it's as if it never happened louise and mick had to use some of their savings to top up their pet insurance and give charlie this chance but they've no regrets you spend what you can afford and in our in our mind we could afford to to pay for charlie in the ways now at the moment the um the insurance excess is up and we're two or three thousand pounds over the excess we would have done anything to have saved him because every animal deserves a life and a life of quality if we had another dog who very sadly developed the same condition we would do the same thing because seeing how ill charlie was and now seeing how fantastic a shape he's in he's been restored to how he was before he was ill and i think if you can do that for an animal then you know your duty bound to do so [Music] next time we've got big problems big problems whilst recovering from her bionic knee operation sasha suffers a major unforeseen setback the spine is effectively collapsed the disc is squashing on the nerves she can't stand up on either back leg and she's in excruciating pain unless we operate on her we're going to have to put her to sleep a nose presented with a cat with a shattered pelvis holy shmoley that should be here but owners who have no money one movement go [Music] you

Channel: Pets & Vets

Views: 4,038

Rating: 4.9736843 out of 5

Keywords: Animals, Animal Documentary, documentaries, Noel Fitzpatrick, the bionic vet full episodes, the bionic vet, the bionic vet season 1 episode 2, Bioengineering, bionic arm surgery, black labrador, Surgery, veterinarian, veterinarian television program, Vet tv show, dog surgery staple removal, dog surgery aftercare

Id: hURNnEoxHDw

Length: 28min 54sec (1734 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021