New Forest Veterinary Dental Service Ltd

23/04/2024

This stunning cat is cheetah Jahzara. Jahzara’s keepers had noticed she had a fractured canine tooth and so I attended to treat her. As always with fractured teeth with pulp exposure, these teeth go through a predictable pathological pathway of pulp necrosis and then periapical pathology (a tooth root abscess). This tooth has a nice classic tooth root abscess on the radiograph! These are hugely important teeth and so root canal treatment was the preferred treatment option. All went well, and she recovered wonderfully and is happily back in her enclosure. Great to have for the day too!

06/03/2024

🦷🦷 Happy National Dentist Day!

Today, we're shining a spotlight on our Dentistry Team, led by Matthew Oxford, Veterinary Dentist and Oral Surgeon.

He has a particular interest in endodontic (root canal) treatment and has completed more than 3,000 root canal procedures in dogs and cats.

During his career, Matthew has carried out ground-breaking jaw removal surgery (mandibulectomy) in pygmy slow loris, which weighs as little as 350g! He has also performed root canal treatment in tigers, lions, leopards, bears, otters, wolves and several primate species.

Supporting Matthew is Sue Vranch, our dedicated Registered Veterinary Nurse (RVN). Sue's journey in veterinary dentistry began nearly 30 years ago.

Sue has had a fascinating career so far and still absolutely loves her profession. She has worked with veterinary dentists in Europe and a human dentist, worked in Utah, in Greece to carry out root canal procedures in stray dogs, to zoos around the country with tigers, lions, Sulawesi Macaque, fruit bats, European brown bears and lemurs! In 2005 she co-authored a textbook for vet nurses: Veterinary Dentistry for the nurse and technician.

Today, we honour Matthew and Sue who keep our pets smiling bright!

15/11/2023

A bittersweet day for me today as I complete my last day teaching I’ve worked with Improve for about 10 years in various forms and courses and had the pleasure of teaching hundreds of vets on post graduate courses, for which I’m truly thankful. Now, however it’s time to focus on the clinical work and most importantly to spend some amazing time with my wonderful kids! I cannot wait! Thank you to everyone at Improve for all the support over the years, especially Barry, who works tirelessly behind the scenes to get this complexes courses pulled off!

06/11/2023

This stunning cat is Clouded Leopard, Bua! Bua had fractured three of her canine teeth and so these needed treating. Clouded Leopards famously have the longest canine to skull ratio of all the big cats and so their teeth are really long. They do however behave just like any other teeth, and if they are fractured they will eventually develop a tooth root abscess. So, treatment here consisted of three root canal treatments (much more preferable than extracting these huge teeth!). I’m happy to report that Bua recovered well and is back in her enclosure and back to normal!

20/09/2023

23/06/2023

What an absolute treat as always to share with you one of our zoo cases. This handsome chap is one of the adult males at Twycross Zoo and the keepers discovered that unfortunately he’d broken his canine tooth when he handed the crown of the tooth to them! When we anaesthetised home we found that he’d actually fractured two canine teeth, and both were complicated crown-root fractures. Unfortunately, this meant that neither tooth were suitable for salvage with root canal treatment. Instead, we therefore extracted the teeth. The extraction technique was exactly how we would extract teeth in one of our domestic patients: creating a mucoperiosteal flap, removing some alveolar bone and then mobilising the flap in order to close the extraction site. As always, we do this very glamorously on the floor of the enclosure! The extractions went really well, and he’s now happily recovering back with the rest of his group!

28/02/2023

This cute little pup is Dakota, and 6 weeks ago she was unfortunately hit by a car, fracturing her mandible just behind her canine tooth. The jaw was completely unstable and Dakota was in a lot of pain.

In 70% of jaw and head traumas, there is damage to the teeth, and so assessment of this is hugely important when we are considering our treatment options. Sometimes these are obvious fractures to the crowns, but sometimes, as in Dakota’s case, the fracture to the bone is around the apex of a tooth and therefore risks damaging the blood supply to that tooth.

Fracture fixation therefore requires minimal disruption to the bones and teeth to minimise damage to the apical blood supply, but an accurate reduction is also essential to ensure we preserve a good occlusion. In this case, a wire and acrylic interdental splint was applied to stabilise the fracture. 6 weeks later, follow up showed that the canine tooth had continued to mature normally, with apexogenesis continuing and dentine thickening symmetrically with the canine tooth on the other side.

Dakota healed incredibly well, has a normal occlusion and the blood supply to the canine tooth was preserved, so no long term consequences to her accident and she has now made a full recovery!

07/02/2023

It was a huge privilege to be able to work on the stunning Meeko, the Red Panda from Sparsholt college, recently. Before taking on exotics cases such as these, I try to find out as much about my patient’s species before I see them. For a Red Panda, it turned out that wasn’t a huge amount. Very little is published even about the dental anatomy of red pandas, nevermind any pathology we might expect. But, as always, teeth are teeth, and so I just when there isn’t much research available, I just go back to first principals. So, once Meeko was anaesthetised by the zoo vet and the anaesthesia service at Anderson Moores, I started with a routine examination and full mouth series of dental radiographs. This revealed, that like so many animal, Meeko had periodontal disease, just like dogs and cats that we see. Periodontal disease is instigated by dental plaque accumulating on the teeth, which if left will cause an inflammatory reaction of the adjacent gingiva (gum). This initially starts as reversible gingivitis, but if left will progress to irriversible gingival recession and alveolar bone loss. This was exactly the case with Meeko, with 4 teeth affected by clinically significant periodontal disease. The dental anatomy of these teeth was assess radiographically, extraction techniques were adapted and the teeth were then extracted using a surgical technique. Once closed, the mucoperiosteal flaps were closed with Monocryl.

Meeko recovered well from her procedure and was back climbing the trees in her enclosure the same day. For dogs and cats (and humans), prevention of periodontal disease is with daily tooth brushing. Obviously, this is a bit more of a challenge in a red panda, and so regular monitoring of this is required. But, certainly for our domestic patients, daily tooth brushing should be the goal!

23/01/2023

It might be -8 this morning, but what a stunning sunrise

17/09/2022

As a vet student, 300million years ago, not for one second did I think my career would take me all around the world, sharing my passion and the huge joy that that brings. I am hugely thankful to GSG for inviting me to Dubai to spend the week with them. I have loved every minute of working with these exceptionally friendly people. Thank you also to April from Midmark and Ivan from Dentanomic for all the amazing support. We’ve had an absolutely blast!

12/08/2022

Some days I still pinch myself over the stunning patients that we get to treat. This was possibly the biggest pinchy day…treating the amazing silverback gorilla, Oumbi, at Twycross Zoo.

Oumbi’s keepers had noticed that he’d broken one of his premolar teeth and so the zoo’s vet team anaesthetised him for us to have a look. Examination and X-rays under anaesthetic showed that he had three premolar teeth that were damaged with periapical lucencies (tooth root abscesses), one of which had a discharging sinus tract.

These teeth, along with an incisor tooth with periodontal disease, were extracted. It’s an underestimate to say that this was a big physical job, with Oumbi weighing over 180kg!! The extractions went really well however and Oumbi was back and eating the same day with the rest of his group.

As a bit of a leap of faith for us, I changed the extraction technique that we would normally use for such big teeth, as we would usually suture the extraction sites closed. We’ve had huge problems however with the primates removing their sutures when they recover from anaesthetic, so this time we opted to let the extraction sites heal “open”. Over a week on from surgery and Oumbi has been much more comfortable and is healing absolutely beautifully.

Huge thank you and well done to the zoo team at Twycross as these cases are very technically challenging!