Jubilee Veterinary Centre

Case Study

12 week old female collie cross

Presenting signs

Vomiting since weaned off mothers milk
Weight loss
Failure to grow.

Possibilities

Worms?
Foreign body eaten by inquisitive pup
Food allergy
Very rare birth defect.

Treatment

We made sure Poppy was fully and adequately wormed and kept off dairy products and gluten. Nothing foreign had gone missing in the house. Poppy continued to lose weight and vomit despite this. Further tests were needed.

Xrays were performed.

Plain xrays did not show alot so we gave the patient Barium to swallow. This is a chalky dye that highlights the stomach and intestines. The head is on the left. You can see a build up of barium in front of the heart and the larger white ball to the right is the stomach full of barium.

This gave us a diagnosis of a persistant right aortic arch. It occurrs when a blood vessel important in the pup in the womb traps the oesophagus(food pipe) over the heart. If left untreated over time the food pipe can rupture and the pup will surely die.

This condition is very rare and open chest surgery is not a common procedure in general veterinary practice however we were left with no other option but to surgically adress the condition and cut the offending ligament.

Figure 1 Chest opened lungs visible

fig 2 ligament identified on top of heart and tied off.

Fig 3

Great recovery from surgery. In good nursing hands and eager to eat.

Our patient recovered well from surgery. We fed her little and often from a height for the next few weeks. The symptoms slowly reduced and after 10 days there was no more vomiting, she continued to thrive and put weight on and now after 1 year is a completely healthy young dog.