Page 3 - Animal Care Trust - Christmas Catalogue 2015

Thank you
Animal lovers like you have helped the Royal Veterinary College’s animal hospitals to diagnose and treat over 20,000 animals this year.
Our hospitals see extremely poorly pets and animals suffering from severe traumas and illnesses. Your support ensures that we can take the best possible care of them, using innovative treatments and facilities designed with the comfort of your pets at heart.
With your help this Christmas we can continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in veterinary medicine and ensure more pets live to ght another day.
Pets like Buddy, seen here with one of our student vets, who visited our hospital with a life-threatening heart condition called Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA).
Buddy’s story
Buddy the Jack Russell puppy almost didn’t get to celebrate his rst Christmas. He was suffering with a serious heart condition and without complex open-heart surgery he would not have made it into adulthood.
When puppies are in the womb, they have a blood vessel which bypasses the heart, and this vessel should close off when the puppy is born and begins to breathe. Unfortunately, in Buddy’s case the vessel remained in place meaning his heart was not able to pump his blood properly. This is a life-threatening condition causing uid build up in the lungs, breathing dif culties and heart failure. Buddy needed urgent treatment.
The Vivid-I cardiac ultrasound and probe, funded by donations to the Animal Care Trust, was vital in the detection of Buddy’s condition and also pivotal in the operation that saved his tiny, strawberry-sized heart.
The Vivid-I equipment provided detailed images of Buddy’s little heart during surgery. This enabled our expert heart surgeon to place a device to plug the dangerous gap with great accuracy. Without the images from the Vivid-I it would have been extremely dif cult to treat Buddy’s miniscule heart.
As part of his recovery Buddy spent time in an oxygen kennel. These kennels are essential to providing emergency care as they enable us to provide life-saving oxygen therapy to our most vulnerable patients like Buddy. Thanks to donations to, and purchases from, the ACT we have recently been able to purchase ve new oxygen kennels for our intensive care unit, which you can see in place in the hospital here.
Buddy was able to go home a few days after his surgery and just in time to spend Christmas with his family. Here he is looking happy and healthy a year on!
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