Day 3: Camp September 2011

Bucharest was decidedly chilly as we waited for Aurelian to collect us at our usual meeting point. It made a change after the heat of the last few days. We arrived at the shelter and settled into our routine of setting up the equipment, checking the patients and selecting the first dogs for the day. Our patients from yesterday were looking good, one male had been licking a little overnight but a repeat of NSAID helped to stop this.

Mesenteric tumour

Today was a day for surprises as a medium sized black female we were expecting to be spaying turned into an exploratory laparotomy when an abdominal mass was palpated after anaesthetic induction. The bitch had already been spayed and a mesenteric mass was located and successfully removed. The rest of her abdominal contents appeared normal and she recovered well. We would have liked to have been able to analyse the mass but this luxury was not available to us in this location. We were suspicious it may have been a foreign body reaction connected to her previous surgery and it reminded us of the purpose of the Veterinary Training Camp, highlighting the importance of good, careful preparation and sound surgical technique.



Close monitoring catches problems early 

We were also unlucky enough to have two anaesthetic emergencies. A little black female and a large old male. He had a pronounced heart murmur and was in fairly poor condition. We were suspicious he may have heartworms which is relatively common parasite in Romania. These cases highlighted the importance of close monitoring and the advantage of having IV and airway access via intubation. We were able to identify deteriorating peripheral pulses and progressive bradypnoea and bradycardia and act quickly with IV administration of an Alpha 2 antagonist, Atropine and doxapram. We did not have an oxygen source but was able to ventilate manually with an ambu bag. Both patients recovered successfully, a credit to the team who remained calm in a stressful situation.

The team hard at work!

Uterus with small Incision (Sandra Patzner)

We have passed the halfway point of our camp and have been working so hard that Lidias fingertips have become numb from breaking ovarian ligaments but we all agree there is nothing as satisfying as the sound when it snaps! Yet again the day had gone so quickly and it was time to drag ourselves away from our work and make the trip back to Bucharest, satisfied with the 3 males that were castrated today and 9 females spayed.