Pericardial Effusion

Last night I also went into the ER for the first time in well over a month. I really enjoyed being back there. Even though I can't touch animals, the techs and doctors still teach me a lot of things and let me help with things that need to be done. Last night there were some interesting cases: an older dog with kidney failure, partial paralysis (probably due to a blood clot thrown from his kidneys), poor blood pressure and a heart murmur. He got progressively better as the day went on, and by the time I got there he was able to stand a bit, and had lost his head tilt. He was still having some neurological problems, but was doing much better. There was another dog that had eaten rat poison and no one had caught it until he started to bleed profusely out of his gums. It was very bizarre to see, and no one was quite sure what to do with him. Since he was having a blood clotting issue, they didn't feel comfortable lifting him up for x-rays for fear of causing more bleeding and bruising. They administered a lot of Vitamin K, which I think was supposed to balance things out in some way.

Another dog came in that had microphthalmic disease (not sure if I spelled that right), and after a variety of stains and tests, his eye pressure revealed glaucoma. Microphthalmic is linked to coat color; if you breed two blue merle Aussies together you get the disease, and any really "double dapple" coat color on a dog (also seen in Dachshunds) can produce this.

By far the most unusual and sad case of the night was a dog with pericardial effusion.This is apparently a rather rare thing to happen. The pericardial sac (surrounding the heart) becomes filled with fluid, putting pressure on the heart and causing it to have problems beating. The heart appears globoid on x-ray, and ultrasound allows views of the fluid. There is a 50% chance that it is cancer, and a 50% chance that it is idiopathic. The treatment is pericardiocentesis, where fluid is drawn off by catheter. The procedure is fairly expensive, and the dog that came in was older, so the owners made the very difficult decision to put him to sleep.

I tried to find some good radiographs on google to show you what it looked like, but was unsuccessful!

~Melissa