Yep, I guess I'm an outlaw of sorts after yesterday. Pennsylvania law states quite explicitly that procedures on animals involving an incision must be done by a licensed veterinarian, and I and a colleague broke that law.
The situation was this: On Wednesday night I noticed one of my cats had a severe hematoma in his left ear. The next morning I called my vet, but it would be three weeks before I could get in by appointment--unacceptable. So I took the cat to our Saturday clinic, but the vet on duty was too busy with surgery to see him.
A hematoma is medically a pretty simple matter--it's basically a large, blood-filled blister. As it turned out, my cat had a bacteriological infection in his ear which caused him to scratch at it, creating the hematoma. It literally inflated his entire left pinna and pushed it out of shape.
Under the direction of a vet who is not licensed in the US but understands "field medicine" we knocked the cat out, aspirated most of the blood from his ear via syringe, and then made two incisions on either side of the pinna. Using a hemostat we inserted a drain into the incisions, tied it off and put an Elizabethan collar on him. We gave him polyflex (antibiotic) and Meloxicam (painkiller) shots.
He's now recovering and is getting regular ear cleaning and Clavanox (antibiotic) treatments. The ear still looks misshapen but is expected to recover normally; he'll have to tolerate the collar for about a week to keep him from scratching at that ear. I'm glad we did what we did, because otherwise he'd have suffered for weeks unnecessarily while waiting for a licensed vet....
The situation was this: On Wednesday night I noticed one of my cats had a severe hematoma in his left ear. The next morning I called my vet, but it would be three weeks before I could get in by appointment--unacceptable. So I took the cat to our Saturday clinic, but the vet on duty was too busy with surgery to see him.
A hematoma is medically a pretty simple matter--it's basically a large, blood-filled blister. As it turned out, my cat had a bacteriological infection in his ear which caused him to scratch at it, creating the hematoma. It literally inflated his entire left pinna and pushed it out of shape.
Under the direction of a vet who is not licensed in the US but understands "field medicine" we knocked the cat out, aspirated most of the blood from his ear via syringe, and then made two incisions on either side of the pinna. Using a hemostat we inserted a drain into the incisions, tied it off and put an Elizabethan collar on him. We gave him polyflex (antibiotic) and Meloxicam (painkiller) shots.
He's now recovering and is getting regular ear cleaning and Clavanox (antibiotic) treatments. The ear still looks misshapen but is expected to recover normally; he'll have to tolerate the collar for about a week to keep him from scratching at that ear. I'm glad we did what we did, because otherwise he'd have suffered for weeks unnecessarily while waiting for a licensed vet....
