Several weeks ago I saw a chihuahua mix for a problem of bloody urine. I
realized that this wasn't a routine urinary tract infection when I did
my exam and felt something rather large and hard in her abdomen. A quick
x-ray later and my suspicion was confirmed...there was a particularly
large stone in her bladder.
For those who aren't used to looking at radiographs, the stone is the big egg-shaped object on the right near the femur.
Unfortunately, the owner couldn't afford surgery and went home with
antibiotics. A couple of weeks later she came back because her dog
seemed to be whining and uncomfortable. After another exam and checking
a few things I concluded that she was painful from the stone, and only
removing it would help. I sent her home with some pain medications, and
thankfully the owner was able to get an extension on her Care Credit.
We scheduled the surgery quickly and I went to work.
**Graphic images to follow**
That object is the urinary bladder before I cut into it. The surgical
approach is actually rather simple, not much different than doing a
spay. In fact, we went ahead and spayed this dog while we were in the
abdomen, something the owner said she wished she had done years ago.
This is the stone coming out of the bladder. As you can tell, the stone
pretty much filled the entire bladder, and the bladder wall was very
thickened and inflamed because of the irritation. In this particular
case it was one single stone, which is less common than having several
smaller ones.
Here is the stone after surgery with a scalpel handle for scale. This
is nowhere near the largest stone I've removed. The winner would be one
that was the size of my whole palm, removed from a large dog many years
ago.
The patient recovered and is doing fine. We're waiting on the results
of analysis of the stone to determine its composition which will allow
us to determine the best way of preventing it from happening again.
Posted in: Disease dogs,dogs
