Saturday 22 November 2008

Lung Foreign Body

The English springer spaniel bounced into us last week. He had a bad cough and was coming in for a heart lung check-up. His breath was like a charnel house but his teeth were clean.

Mike well experienced with what may be the problem took a couple of x-rays which tipped the diagnosis more in favour with his idea. There was a fuzzy area on the chest x-ray in the lungs which was suspicious.

A general anaesthetic and a scope down the trachea into the lungs confirmed what was happening. Springer’s and apparently Labradors are the main culprits for “foreign bodies” being inhaled into the lungs. They generally cause a cough and can be well tolerated. Often just the cough and no slow down in their lifestyle, oh and the bad breath. Do not mistake it for doggie bad breath. This is putrid and bad teeth/tooth smell is not even on the scale it is so tame.


A set of graspers was pushed down the instrument channel in the scope and the item was caught. It was fairly difficult and at first a few single grains were pulled up. This moved the main plug a bit into a better position and a 5th go the grasper's managed to get a good grip on the full plug. It was slowly lifted all the way out the lung.


If l thought the smell was bad before it got a whole lot worse as the plug arrived in what had been fresh air. The whole lot was shoved in a bottle ASAP so that we could get some more un-putrid air circulating, the plug was put to one side for the owner to see.


The lung was red and spots of pus still remained but would soon settle down.


An hour later the Springer was back to his bouncy self. There was still a bit of a cough but that would go pretty quickly. The plug was an awl of barley. The cough had started in about august which was cropping time (roughly) so that was about a 3 month window of how long it had been down in the lung.

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Better photos views in thePhoto album

4 comments:

joker the lurcher said...

crikey! and there was me moaning about dave rolling in a dead mole!

Vetnurse said...

:-)) it probably was on a par with that possible a bit more depending how old the segulls body was.

It was easier to deal with once in a sealed bottle air circulation did the clean up.

Anonymous said...

One of our sows went down with diarrhoea and a fever last year. It resolved itself when the sow passed a crow's skull in her dung. And while pig dung normally doesn't smell too bad, that was one occasion when I wished I hadn't been nearby. The smell was atrocious.

Vetnurse said...

Uggs Stonehead thats gross. So long as it does not become compulsory for humans to take on the diet of certain animals.