A team of veterinary surgeons of the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (KVASU) has scripted a heartening story during the ongoing lockdown by successfully guiding an open-thorax surgery for an eight-week-old puppy in Malaysia with the help of live streaming teleguidance .
Max, a Miniature Pinscher pup that weighed only 800g, presented at the Penang Veterinary hospital in Malaysia with a congenital disorder. The puppy was diagnosed with a rare by-birth anomaly of the major blood vessel arising from the heart, the aorta, which had formed a ring around the food pipe — the oesophagus. The condition can only be corrected through a complicated open thoracic surgery.
However, none of the veterinarians in Malaysia were confident of performing the surgery, especially given that the younger age and smaller size of the animal posed a surgical and anaesthetic risk.
When the veterinarians felt the need for a team of experienced surgeons, Shibu Sulaiman, an alumni of KVASU who now works in Malaysia as a chief surgeon and clinical director of the veterinary hospital in Penang, suggested that they could approach his teachers in Kerala.
Dr. Sulaiman then approached S. Sooryadas, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery at KVASU’s College of Veterinary and Animal Science at Pookode. Once the formal procedures were completed the technical processes were set up for guiding and communicating with the surgeons in Malaysia through online live streaming.
The surgeons in Malaysia comprising Dr. Sulaiman, Shivakumar Singh, Thai I Ling and Amal Bhaskar functioned as the ears and hands of the experts of KVASU during the surgery and acted as per the teleguidance provided throughout the procedure.
Dr. Sooryadas led a three member team that guided the surgery.
The animal was possibly the smallest puppy in the world to have undergone an open thorax surgery via live streaming and teleguidance for correction of a vascular ring anomaly, Dr. Sooryadas said after the surgery.
The other members of the KVASU team were N.S. Jinesh Kumar, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery and Gisha G. Nair, Senior Resident. It took five hours for the entire procedure and the condition of the animal was quite satisfactory now, Dr. Sooryadas added.
