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Cruciat Ligament

aslan

aslan

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My friend Mary who took "Jack" (whom I bred) to England with her, has just rung me in tears. Jack has done his cruciat ligament and needs an operation. He is 8 1/2 years old.

Does anyone have any experience with this operation and the recovery time afterwards?

Urgent.... I told her I would call her back asap. Thanks. :thumbsup:
 
[SIZE=8pt]Hi Aslan.[/SIZE]

I have no experiance with it in whippys, but a firefighter I work with is just about to go through the op, it is a reletively easy op depending on the tear.

Human recovery is about 8 to 10 weeks though.

I guess a whippy would recover a little faster.

 

Sorry I could not be of more help.

 

Gavin
 
that's more than I knew a moment ago ... Thanks Gavo!
 
I had a little bitch who damaged both cruciate ligaments in a leg and had an operation to replace them, she was fine and running about again but it did take some months and some swimming therapy to get her to use the leg. It was about 16 years ago so I cannot remember the details of how long. I am sure I have seen something recently about cruciate ligament injuries and that they can now repair without an op. Has anyone else seen this?
 
I had a staffie x who had this operation, and both me and my mum have had the same op!! The staff, who was about 6 at the time, recovered really well.

As I understand it in dogs, they take the hard muscle from under the skin and fashion a new ligament with it. The new ligament is tougher than the original and very rarely needs repairing again. It's fiddly for the surgeon because it has to get into a figure of 8 and is like very tough rubber, so often pings out again! This op for the staff was routine back in in 93/94 so I can only imagine that they've improved it since then. Certainly in humans it's usually a keyhole surgery. My knee is so much better than before and 100% fitter than the knee they haven't operated on!!

It's still a big op for the dog and she will have to keep her quiet for several weeks afterwards. I imagine there's more help with physio for dogs than there was 10 or so years ago, but certainly Polly never had any problems with that leg afterwards, and you know what staffs are for throwing themselves around!

Wish her luck from me and keep us informed of how she goes. :thumbsup: PM me if she'd like my number to talk about it. :)
 
My greyhound had hers repair nearly 2years ago now. it took about 3 months till she was aloud of the lead. The vets did a very good.
 
Thanks everyone ... Hilary, Mary is calling me back in 2 hrs so I will give her your number - thanks so much for that.

She is quite distressed about her darling boy and I think mainly the 'not knowing' about what it is or how the op works and recovery time etc is her main worry, plus the fact that she is on her own now and Jack is her only dog and she's had him since he was a 10 week old pup - he will be 9 in January.

Thanks once again everyone - I'm sure talking to Hilary will put Mary's mind at ease, ... well maybe not at ease, but I'm sure it will calm her down somewhat. Jack is back at home overnight with pain killers and will go back to the vet's tomorrow for the op.

I will let you know how he and Mary get on.

Thanks once again,

Lana.
 
I hope Jacks operation goes okay :thumbsup:

If I was her as part of the recovery I would recommend using homoeopathic Syphytum (Comfrey) excellent for tendon/ligament damage and probably would also put him on glucosamine with chondritin. These should help speed up teh healing process.

:huggles: To Jack & mary
 
No experience Lana at all .... but sending Best wishes and Good Luck for him :luck: :luck: :huggles:
 
I had a whippet that apparently had torn cruciate ligaments which was repaired using polyester fibres. The stability of the knee in this bitch seems good unfortunatly the leg was compromised bu having an irrepairable fracture to the iliac crest so its difficult to assertain the effectiveness of the cruciate repair.

IMHO if the cruciate ligament is not completely snapped there is merit inh aving a cooling off period and allowing natural repair as in my experience all surgery repairs by scarring and un nessacerysurgical intervention invairably worsens the prognosis.
 
Badger :- " had a torn cruciate , and I was advised to leave well alone , he was about 9 years at the time . made a complete recovery ( well almost , but his other back leg was the one with the broken hock so he scouldnt give he other leg the correct amoutnt of help it needed ,) if you see what i mean , :wacko:

I also known other other people who not had ot opoerated on and they have gone back to being perfectly sound and won back in the show ring . So I suppose Im too late to save her from it being operated on . :oops:
 
IMO whippets are one of the breeds which I would consider treating conservatively (ie no op, just strict rest, Seraquin and anti-inflammatories). They're light, small and agile enough for this to work in some cases.

It's difficult to make helpful comments about the surgery without knowing what op is being performed. The one described by Hilary is pretty common, called an 'over the top', it involves using a bit of connective fascia from the thigh as a graft to replace the damaged ligament. Another technique, the d'Angelo (or something, can't remember!) is similar but a nylon suture is used to anchor the shin bone to the sesamoid bones behind the knee. The posh one these days is the TPLO (tibial plateau levelling osteotomy, or totally pointless leg operation as one very prominent orthopod prefers to call it!). It involves saws, bits of metal and lots of swearing surgeons arguing about angles. The main advantage in this technique is that it addresses the actual cause of the weakness by rotating the angle of the top of the tibia relative to the femur.

There will always be some degree of arthritis in dogs which have this problem, despite surgery. And yes, recovery can be quite prolonged - quickest time to 'foot-down' is usually achieved with the TPLO.

None of this probably makes any sense, but I would say that if she has any doubts or concerns about the surgery she needs to talk to the vet before anything more is done, so that she feels comfortable that she's doing the right thing. That's the most important bit!
 
My Min Schnauzer X JRT has had both go at age 2 and 3. X-ray showed she had " bent over" femurs so repair wasn't an option. She was lame for about 3 months each time ( they warned me that the strain from the 1st leg would make the other side break down.) There were times when I wondered if she would ever be sound but she is nearly 11, has a great life and jumps about fine. I think we gave her cortiflex on the vets advice, it was very expensive but really helps the cartiledge to recover. Wish your friend good luck. :luck:
 
Sorry have no experience with cruciat ligament op, but wish Jack speedy recovery :luck: :luck: :luck:

Lida
 
Thanks to everyone for your help and especially Hilary who talked to Mary on the phone and attempted to calm her shattered nerves.

Jack has had his op and is well. There was a piece of floating cartilege in there as well and it seems as though he has had the op where they put in the polyester fibres (but I will find out more about that next week when he goes for his one week check up)

He's on anti-inflammatories and anti-biotics, his temp is normal and he is good - although not using the leg, which is a good thing. Lead walking to toilet at present only. Recovery time and when and where he can be let off lead will be decided at next week's check up.

And Mary is feeling much better about it all now.

Thanks once again. I promise to keep you updated
 
My Billy had his cruciate ligament done at 7 months the vet used his muscle to repair it, he was only 7 months old, we had waited a month to see if would improve before we had it operated on but he was still limping.

He very quickly recovered and was trying to jump on the settee the next day :eek:

It was only a matter of weeks before he was right again the hardest thing was to stop him jumping!

He is 8 years old now and you can see a faint scar if you look closely and touch wood :luck: doesnt seem to have suffered any ill effects since.
 
Mary called me last night to tell me that all was well with Jack. It was such a relief to hear her sounding so much happier! :)

Lana, have you any photos of the lad in question? It would be nice to see him after all this worry! :sweating: :thumbsup:
 
aslan said:
Thanks to everyone for your help and especially Hilary who talked to Mary on the phone and attempted to calm her shattered nerves.
Jack has had his op and is well.  There was a piece of floating cartilege in there as well and it seems as though he has had the op where they put in the polyester fibres (but I will find out more about that next week when he goes for his one week check up)

He's on anti-inflammatories and anti-biotics, his temp is normal and he is good - although not using the leg, which is a good thing.  Lead walking to toilet at present only.  Recovery time  and when and where he can be let off lead will be decided at next week's check up.

And Mary is feeling much better about it all now.

Thanks once again. I promise to keep you updated

Click to expand...
So pleased to hear that things are going ok for Mary and Jack.

:huggles: to then both from Macey and Byron
 
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