Other Surgery or no surgery? What would you do?

[pcchenard]

No, orthopedic surgeons do not do an MRI on dogs prior to knee surgery. Yes, you can have an MRI done and pay 2-3 thousand dollars for it. So if you are willing to pay that much money to know for sure if it is a torn tendon or not, then I'm sure it can be arranged. I don't know any vets with an MRI machine except at UC Davis Vet school. Even at Davis they do not do MRIs prior to knee surgery. They have all kinds of technology. All depends on what you are willing to pay for.

That's too bad that they want to just go right to surgery, with all it's risks. If they started doing more MRI's first, as they should, the price would most likely come down to something more reasonable.

 

[bullmama]

That's too bad that they want to just go right to surgery, with all it's risks. If they started doing more MRI's first, as they should, the price would most likely come down to something more reasonable.

Yeah that is what I was going to say, the cost of the MRI is about the same as the surgery so most would not even consider it. Plus many vets don't even have a MRI there are very few places that do.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[jecarnl]

We just had our 3 year old Frog's ccl repaired yesterday in Knoxville by Dr. Mitch Rosenzweig at Animal Emergency Specialty Center. We were not sure on whether or not to do it as one of our Bullmastiffs had the same injury and he recovered fine without surgery. I still don't know if we did the right thing by doing the surgery with Frog or not, but Dr. Mitch believed it was the right thing to do......

 

[dolphin]

I hope and pray that Frog will be all better

 

[agentbunny]

We just had our 3 year old Frog's ccl repaired yesterday in Knoxville by Dr. Mitch Rosenzweig at Animal Emergency Specialty Center. We were not sure on whether or not to do it as one of our Bullmastiffs had the same injury and he recovered fine without surgery. I still don't know if we did the right thing by doing the surgery with Frog or not, but Dr. Mitch believed it was the right thing to do......

I think that over the next several weeks you will be much relieved and ultimately grateful that you did the surgery. Your bullmastiff may have not had the ACL tear as they suspected and that is why he recovered. An ACL does not self repair, from what I understand. I know misdiagnosis happens because both my vet and the orthopedic surgeon believed Lola had a torn ACL but discovered during surgery that it was just extreme swelling of the tissues around the floating patella. Now, 6 weeks past the surgery, she is running and playing like never before. Even though the ACL was not torn, I do not regret the surgery one bit. I love seeing her pain free and able to play like a puppy. Your Frog will be just fine. Give it some time. I know the first couple weeks are tough.

 

[sherida]

My 3 year old bully had both back legs done. The recuperation time is lengthy but it was defiantly worth it and she will never have any problems again. If yours has had only one ccl done the chance are she will need the other one done eventually that's what the vet told us and sure enough a year almost to the day the other one went.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[sheshistory]

Any update?

My two cents: I had a bully similar to you with the one leg lame leg. We waited but ended up having surgery. Your regular vet will probably just tie the ligament back together. This can stretch out and break again but the orthopedic surgeon will do a TPLO, which is more invasive, but reshapes the joint and will last a lifetime.

We ended up having the TPLO, on both knees, with great results.

According to our orthopedic surgeon, once one knee goes, the other has an 88% chance of going so you'll need to consider that and it might be best to fix the one leg now while the other is still functional, in the likely case it also becomes an issue.

 

[agentbunny]

Any update?

My two cents: I had a bully similar to you with the one leg lame leg. We waited but ended up having surgery. Your regular vet will probably just tie the ligament back together. This can stretch out and break again but the orthopedic surgeon will do a TPLO, which is more invasive, but reshapes the joint and will last a lifetime.

We ended up having the TPLO, on both knees, with great results.

According to our orthopedic surgeon, once one knee goes, the other has an 88% chance of going so you'll need to consider that and it might be best to fix the one leg now while the other is still functional, in the likely case it also becomes an issue.

100% Agree

 

[rjisaterp]

Jewel has an appointment July 30th with a puppy orthopod. Under sedation, our vet performed the drawer test to see if the knee joint moved which was inconclusive (i.e. there was a little give). X-rays show a luxating patella. On a side note, while Jewel was at the vet for 6 hours, Bentley was roaming the house looking for Jewel everywhere. He was really out of his comfort zone. So please keep your fingers crossed for Jewel as well as Bentley. I will update the forum next week after Jewel's appointment.