Caersarian Section in the bitch

Preparing for surgery on this Deerhound bitch

This operation took place in the late evening when this bitch's labour came to a halt, with lots of pups still inside. The young Deerhound did not respond to drugs, so a Caesrian Section was carried out. This involves an abdominal operation and opening the womb to remove the pups. Because the womb is so long, in 2 long tubes or horns, it is usually necessary to make at least 2 openings to remove the pups. In this case, 3 were needed to remove the 11 pups. In the above picture, the dog is lying in a support cradle, drip in place, on a thermal blanket, under gaseous anaesthetic and the skin is being cleaned prior to surgery.See operations for more details.

Here you can see the dog covered in drapes and a small part of the womb appearing - there is a pup within this bend!

Now more of the womb is exposed (3 pups here). This is only one half of of one side of the womb! Now we start to quickly remove the pups, who are active very quickly, after a great deal of rubbing and cleaning by the nurses.

They would not stay on the Vetbed and hot bottles, so we put them in 2 heated boxes - and they were trying to escape even from these!! - this is while the Vet is finishing the operation. They are instinctively looking for food! They will soon catch up, feeding as mum comes round and mum goes home as soon as possible, same night.

See the blood-spattered floor! There is an awful lot of bloody discharges during an op like this - and a lot of cleaning afterwards! The womb is sown up, then the abdominal wall, in three layers and the bitch is allows to come round quickly and feed the pups, but with strong painkillers still acting.

Suturing one of the three incisions in the womb. Then, below, the skin closed.

 
Magic mending -and much thinner!!

A big breed like this gives us further problems with simply moving her. The wheeled tables and variable height adjustments make life easier for us.

A case like this has a lot of intravainous fluids during surgery to allow for the fluid loss which takes place. Special anaesthetic considerations are also needed to ensure that the pups are not born too sleepy to breathe. We also need the help of the on-call nurse, who works very hard in an op like this. The bitch had 11 healthy pups.  
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