Irish Veterinary Specialists

07/04/2025

Some fractures are not simple and have significant other issues. This case had huge skin deficits that had scraped along the road and was a huge risk for infection.
This is how i repair cases like that.
Stabilise the fracture and then manage the skin deficit, allow clean granulation tissue to grow then close aft that.
Once the skin healed and the bone heals then remove the implants.
One technique can't fix everything so you need lot of options!
enjoy

01/04/2025

Here is another in my series of simple, Specialist surgery slides. enjoy

25/03/2025

28/01/2025

This little fella had a fungus on his head that growing and eating away the tissue. He came to me after three surgeries and we decided to be very aggressive and creative to remove it.
There was no point in going half way.
Now i have not shown the blood and brains but you can see what we did. Its called an axial pattern skin flap.
You can also see how quickly he recovered, eating an hour after surgery. legend!!
now all he has to remember the surgery is a cool Mow Hawk haircut.

28/01/2025

Spinal surgery and neurological disease is terrifying to people. My poor buddy, my friend how can he recover.

There are roughly five specialists in three hospitals in this country who are qualified and trained to do these surgeries and evaluations. We are one.
We have had a lot of cases over the last month as well as revision surgeries from people attempting surgeries so i thought i would post this.
It's not a case just doing some surgeries or having some knowledge, we can assess all cases and provide specialist knowledge on each case.
Remember these are emergencies and we are available 24 hours if necessary.
Here are some images of happy cases before and after surgery to give you some optimism if your friend is ever in need.

I promise to improve my video skills and editing for the next cases but for now enjoy some happy dogs with happy owners.
jerry

05/01/2022

Veterinary positions Available.
Some contacts of mine in a couple of Cork City small animal practices asked me to put out a mention of some job availabilities. Bother practices are based in Cork city and have experienced senior vets present and generally progressive. One is looking for a relatively experienced vet that wants to progress with the practice. The other is happy for an experienced or relatively new vet.
Both seem like good places to work and there is no on call on either as far as i know.
If anyone is interested then send me a message and ill pass you on the contact details.

01/12/2021

Closing Wedge and TTA course with Duggan Veterinary supplies.

Spent a fantastic Friday and Saturday in Duggan’s new purpose built facility, teaching and demonstrating closing wedge and TTA techniques with a skilled group of vets.

The set up was perfect and the mix of lectures and lab work was balanced to give everyone an excellent chance of progressing on to these surgeries.

Even managed to catch up with a few old classmates and some of my former students so socially that was a plus.

Along the way I think we discussed almost ever issue with cruciate disease and complications that exist!!

I have lectured and demonstrated in many countries and I can happily say this was up there with the best of them.

Well here is the continued success of these courses as they are truly a great credit to the veterinary profession in Ireland.

Jerry

25/10/2021

Exploratory laparotomy talk November 4th, 8pm Zoom. I am going to try and get the mix right in this talk. I may skip fast through some of the things we are likely to know well, concentrate on things that may be more relevant for us in practice. Use a bucket load of case pictures and videos and hope i wont over run too much !!!
I definitely feel and hope this will be useful for all practitioner.

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_d9hGIYhHR9-tdXIonBY59A

11/10/2021

Missing the roof of his mouth!!!!

His owners thought it was strange that he drank like a pigeon, water poured out of his nose and he sneezed dog food out of his nose after every meal.

So when we had a look we could see this little fella had no roof to his mouth.
There was a massive hole. So anytime anything went into his mouth it went straight up into the nose.

What was amazing was how well this fella was doing.

So I has to transplant a flap of tissue with its own blood supply across and build a new roof to the mouth and the soft palate behind it to stop food going down the the wrong tube.

Bish Bash Bosh new mouth rebuilt. No in fairness I had the easy part of the deal, his owners had to stop a puppy chewing on anything harder then “Bunty the fluffy teddy bear “ until this had healed.

Now he has a totally normal top of the mouth and life is going well. The picture above are chronological and the last few are about four weeks following the surgery.

Pretty impressive!!!!

18/08/2021

Where has my intestine gone??????
They are never going to let these pictueres stay up on face book but here we go any way. If you have weak stomach then look away!!!

dodgie pictures are in the comments !

This fella had a broken pelvis years ago and recovered well with magical cat healing ability that we as vets know and love. The only problen is the fracture healing lead to a narrow pelvic canal and theis lead to periods of constipation. As time progtressed the constipation got worse and it became clear that the muscles of the large intestine were no longer able to expel the faeces.
If I got it earlier enough I can opertate and open up the pelvic canal and sometimes that is enough. It is a pretty cool proceeure and I have a fancy technique that makes it much easier but not for this case.
In this case we needed to remove the large intestine as well as opeing up the pelvis. Its call a sub total colectomy. For most cats the faeces become softer and most it allows them to have a normal life without the extremely painfull impaction and constantat e***as and veterinary treatments.
Cats with chronic constipation were medical management stops working require surgical intervention. The surgery of choice is a subtotal colectomy, basically removing most of the colon. YUCK !!!!
There are two types depending on if we keep ileocaecocolic valve or dont. The ijunction normally stops colonic contents getting into the small intestine; so getting rid of it can lead to bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine, with messy consiquences and diarrhoea. If I have to I remove it but if I can keep the juntion I will as there are potential side affect that we just can predict. If I can do a subtotal easliy it is my preference but somttimes it is not and for most patient this is a last chance surgery so I will do what is necessary.
The most commonly reported complication in the long term is recurrence of constipation one study cited a 25percent rate (that’s why I opened upo the pelvic in this case too). But most of these are ealiy maanages medically at that stage so its still a win.
I don’t use an e***a prior to surgery as this converts the content to a poo soup that can leak out and mess the surgica site, nobody wahts a leaky poo soup , especially during surgery.
The colon has the most bcteria in it and it heals the worst out of the whole intestines so careful technique and managemen are essential as a contimation leads to peritonititis and most don’t recover.
Most of them get diarrrhoea for some level for about eight weeks but then it resolves. This case did super well, no longer has constipation and no longer poops on the kitchn table and cooker, I know!!! What but turns out he was in such pain that when he could get it out he woud get it out where ever he could, poor lad.
Any way solution this one is now cured happy and amazd how easily it is to poo now. Got to be a good reslt the only is saving a fortune in e***as, lacutloase , parafin and ready meals ( as she can use the kitchen again)

13/08/2021

We turned a greyhound into a pin cushion!!!!!

External fixator tibia

This lady smashed her leg just running and playing like an Olympic gymnast.

With fractures like this we have a choice.

Open up the area expose the bone and place a large plate across the fracture. This is a big time consuming procedure, is painful even with an epidural and it removes the local enzymes that promote healing that have been produced by the body in response to the fracture.

Another option is to align the joint above and below the fracture, no need to reduce the fracture perfectly like a jigsaw and to stabilise this with an external frame and pins through the bone.

This has the advantages of being quicker, maintaining the healing soup of enzymes and chemicals around the fracture, maintaining the blood supply.

Guess which one we did!!!

If you look at the immediately post operative images where you can see the fracture gap and the six weeks post operative images where you can see the new healing bone has filled the gap.

No in fairness she bruised her owner up a bit over that time using the metal enshrouded leg like a mace!!!
Basically we had to put pads over the pins to protect her owner as she was like a Tasmanian devil on speed and happy juice with a combine harvester leg!!!

But he didn’t mind as she did so well.

No the pins are out and she is back to living her best life.