Author Archive
Adult Stem Cell Therapy
Posted by: | CommentsStem cell therapy has been controversial, to say the least. However, what I am so excited about is not embryonic stem cell therapy, which comes from a possibly unrelated embryo, but adult stem cells, which is harvested from your own body. This technology is not in the future, it is here, right now. It is being used to help dogs who suffer with osteoarthritis of the elbows, hips, knees, tarsi, carpi and shoulders, dogs with polyarthritis, dogs with tendon and ligament injuries, and dogs with bone fractures. With the research going on, hopefully soon there will be help for dogs with liver, heart and kidney diseases, as well. The process is relatively simple. Your vet has to be credentialed and authorized by the Vet-Stem Company, to do the treatment. The process requires your dog to be anesthetized twice within a 72 hour time frame, so a complete examination, including blood tests, are required to be certain that he or she is fit for that process. If your dog is safe for the anesthetics, and fits the profile for the stem cell therapy, then your vet anesthetizes him or her, and by sterile surgery, removes the required amount of fat from your dog. That fat is packaged specifically for transport to the Vet-Stem Lab, the lab extracts the stem cells from the fat, and within 48 hours the stem cells are back to your vet ready to be injected into the affected joints. This type of medicine is called Regenerative Medicine. These adult stem cells have the ability to differentiate into many different tissues, including tendon, bone, and ligament. There is no chance for rejection, because it is autologous, that is, it is cells from your own body. The lab does a cell count and viability assessment of the stem cells extracted from the fat, and sends the appropriate number back to your vet for injection of the affected tissue. If there were excess cells collected, the Vet-Stem lab will bank those cells in liquid nitrogen for possible use in the future. Those cells can live for over 14 years.
So you can see why I am so excited about this new Regenerative Medicine. Our first case will be a sweet young German Shepherd boy with bilateral elbow dysplasia who is not a candidate for surgery. His Mom is doing everything she can to help him, including medications, chinese herbs, acupuncture, and physical therapy, including the underwater treadmill and exercises. However, this stem cell treatment may really decrease his pain and stiffness, and boost his ability to move. We are really excited to provide this new therapy that may provide help for those dogs who have not been helped adequately with the previous modalities we offer. We will continue to watch for the newest and safest therapies on the horizon for your loving companion animal. Watch these posts for updates on the dogs we judge to require this new Regenerative Medicine.
Seizures
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My name is Gunther, and I am one loved guy. I am only 5 years old, but I have been battling seizures since I was 2. It can happen to anyone, but my breed, a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, has more than their fair share of the disorder. My luck. Anyway, I got it bad, but I also got it good in picking the best family ever!! They have really hung in there and gotten me the very best treatment possible! My Veterinary Neurologist, Dr. Knowles, is very special to me — she knows all the newest and best treatments for me, and she even calls my Mom every week to check on me. She loves me, I know, but who doesn’t? How can you not love this face? So I throw a little drool every once in a while — how is that so different than all that hair gel I see folks pay so much for? Just slather a little of this clear gel I so willingly provide — free of charge! I digress, back to the story……
My Mom gets me the very best integrative medicine possible. She takes me to the Veterinary Neurologist for my Western Medicine, and then she drives me over a hundred miles to get my acupuncture, chinese medicinal herbs and medical qigong. See, she loves me! She wasn’t content until she felt she had done everything she could to keep my seizures under control. I get something called “cluster seizures,” which can be really dangerous if I just keep having the seizures one after the other — something about cooking my brain……
So I gotta tell you, I have a good life. I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for my Mom taking such good care of me. To sum that up, for seizure disorders, you may need to use the western anticonvulsant medications, and you also want to see an integrative veterinarian to add acupuncture, chinese herbs, supplements, talk about your diet, and maybe even Medical Qigong. There are a lot of possibilities for treatment, so don’t let your family get overwhelmed if you get a diagnosis of seizure disorder. I’m living proof that sometimes even the hard cases can live a good quality life.
Splenectomy
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Wow, what a week. Let me start from the begining. My name is Mosa, and Mom and I are having to cope with some big stuff right now. It started one morning when I felt this pain in my belly and I just had to lay down. My Mom got worried and tried to get me up, and I wanted to do what she asked, but I just didn’t have the strength to get up. It came on me all of a sudden, I had no idea what was happening, and neither did my Mom. We got real lucky and were able to get in to see Dr. Paula that day (Lisa at the front desk kinda likes me, I think…..) and when Mom described what happened to me to Dr. Paula, she got this funny look on her face — kind of worried-like. She hadn’t ever looked at me that way before. Well, that look meant that I needed some tests — x-rays, blood tests, and an ultrasound of my belly. Sure enough, Dr. Paula’s worries were confirmed — I had a mass on my spleen that had ruptured that morning. She says that I am really lucky to be alive — lots of dogs don’t survive the rupture of a splenic mass — but I guess I clotted better than some. Now Dr. Paula explained to Mom that a mass on the spleen can be benign, like a blood blister, but it is still serious, because the spleen filters all the blood, and when a spleen ruptures, there’s a lot of bleeding into the belly. She also said that many of these masses are tumors, called hemangiosarcomas. Dr. Beck, the radiologist, looked at all my abdominal organs to see if she could see any other tumors in my belly, and she didn’t see any. That’s a good thing — just the one mass on the spleen. Dr. Paula checked all my blood tests, and found no reason for the mass, like a bleeding disorder, or Tick Fever ( Ehrlichia). So she and Mom talked real serious-like, and decided to schedule me for surgery as soon as possible. I started taking these chinese herbs to help me to clot better before surgery, and my Mom really spoiled me even more than usual for those few days before surgery. It was great! So the day of surgery came, Mom took me to the veterinary hospital, and I really got a lot of kisses that day! I don’t remember much about that day–I was there, then I went to sleep, and I woke up feeling really dizzy. That Dr. Paula gave me some Good drugs, I didn’t hurt, but I didn’t feel like my regular self, that’s for sure. I had a bandage on most of my body, and I wasn’t walking so good. Anyway, I got to go home with Mom that night — she was awfully worried, but she tried not to let me see it. Oh yeah, the other thing they told me — I got a big blood transfusion from Lisa’s 10 month old pup — no wonder I am starting to feel so good! Today I went in to have my incision checked and get my bandage changed, and Dr. Paula told us that the biopsy results came in. She wasn’t smiling — it was the hemangiosarcoma tumor on my spleen. The good news is that they didn’t see any tumors that had metastasized before surgery, but the concern is that since the tumor had ruptured, the tumor cells could have gone anywhere in my belly to cause other tumors to grow. Now I’m not a young pup, and my Mom doesn’t want to put me through any chemotherapy at my age, so Dr. Paula mixed up some more of those chinese herbs to try to help my immune system fight any new tumors, and to help to change the imbalances in my body that set up the tumor formation in the beginning. They don’t taste so bad, and I am getting some really good food right now, so I don’t really mind. I just hope I can have some more really good quality time with my Mom — she’s kind of special, you know. I feel fine, Dr. Paula says I just may not have any more trouble from this, but we have to check in every few months, just to be sure. That’s OK, I don’t mind — I sure feel better now that that thing is out of my belly, so I can get back to my regular life. My Mom still needs me, and I have a lot of work to do, which right now is called sleeping…….
So the reason for my telling you this story is so that if you see a collapse like mine, you will know that it could be serious, and you need to see a vet as soon as possible. Hopefully this is the end of my tumor story, since we caught it right after the first rupture. I’ll keep you posted.
Medial Patellar Luxation
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Hi, we’re Amanda and Oliver. We wanted to tell you our story about our knees. Dr. Paula says the name for our problem is Medial Patellar Luxation. What that means to us is that our kneecaps don’t stay in place in front of our knees the way they are supposed to. We’ve always known that we just couldn’t jump like our brothers and sisters could, and they made fun of us that sometimes when we run we have to skip to get our knees to work right, but we didn’t know what was different about us. Dr. Paula says that this Medial Patellar Luxation, or MPL for short, is really common in the smaller breeds like us. It can be inherited from our parents, so it is always something that the vet checks when we are puppies. Sometimes it shows up early, sometimes it doesn’t show up until we are older. The severity of the problem is graded from a 1 to a 5, depending upon whether the kneecap stays in place most of the time or stays dislocated most of the time. If it is really bad, a Grade 5, you usually have to have surgery to correct it, and Dr. Paula says that is best done by a board-certified veterinary surgeon. If it is not so bad, maybe a Grade 1 to 3, sometimes there are less invasive procedures that can help. That’s where we come in. Our knees are only a Grade 2 to 3, not too bad right now, so Dr. Paula is treating us with some natural anti-inflammatory medicine, and acupuncture. We expected to have to let Dr. Paula know how we felt about so many needles stuck in us every week, but you know what? She is using a laser instead of needles, and it doesn’t hurt at all. A few spots are really sore, so it gets a little warm when she treats those areas, but we flinch a little and let her know, and she moves on to another spot for a few minutes. She always comes back to those spots to finish the treatment, but by then it doesn’t hurt anymore. I’m feeling a little Chinese already — is my beard looking different? Oh yeah, the other thing is, we are on a diet…….she says we need to be thin in order to put less strain on our knees …… not liking it, but I guess it’s better than surgery. OK, well, it’s time for dinner, gotta go, just wanted to let you all know a little about MPL, since it is such an important problem in us little guys and gals.
Amanda, that’s My bowl, move over…..you’re hogging the food…move over!
Estrus — who knew?
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Hi, my name is Suzy Bandita. I was rescued about 5 months ago from a really scary part of Los Angeles. It was a tough life growing up there, and I thought I could leave those memories behind me and keep my secrets. You see, all my new friends who are taking care of me now thought I was fixed, you know — spayed, incapable of having babies, ever. What they didn’t know is that I have already had the pleasure of that experience, on the streets, and no, really, I never was “fixed”, and oh yeah, I guess the possibility of having new babies comes around every 6 months or so, and they weren’t really ready for the surprise. Whew, glad I got that out. I was afraid maybe they wouldn’t want me anymore if they knew…..So, well, now I am in estrus, in heat, in season as they say, and I’m wearing these undergarments made to keep me from messing up the house and furniture and stuff, and I feel really really loved. I didn’t know how much they loved me — they aren’t even mad at me that I haven’t had my surgery yet — they love me anyway! My new Mom holds me a lot, and she says not to worry, after this is all over I can have my surgery, and then I won’t be upsetting my new brother so much. He’s a little clueless about all this, I guess he had his surgery early in life, so he has no idea why I’m flirting with him so much — he’s clueless, worthless in this department. I didn’t have a bit of trouble finding willing and able guys on the streets of LA……oh yeah, we aren’t talking about that time of my life, sorry. My new brothers and sister are really quite nice — kinda hairy on the face, not clean shaven like me, but nice all the same. They’ve shared their great home with me, and for that I am grateful. Well, gotta go change my diaper — and for all you young lady dogs out there — get your surgery, your spay, early in life — you have no idea what you’ll have to go through if you don’t!
