CHENNAI: If your dog is suffering from weak kidneys, fret not. Here's a way to turn your pet from near comatose to cheery overnight. ‘Continuous renal replacement therapy’, a procedure that involves both dialysis and blood transfusion essentially takes 24 hours for human beings. However in dogs, it can be pulled off in under 10 hours, depending on the severity of the case.
“Essentially what we are doing is allowing the kidney to rest for a while,” says Dr S Prathaban, head of Veterinary Clinical Medicine at the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (TANUVAS) in Vepery. He adds, “The dialysis offers a blood detox and the transfusion introduces the dog's own purified blood back into the blood stream.”
And with kidney issues stemming from a wide range of causes such as toxins in food, over use of drugs or infections like leptospira, it is becoming common to see pets with this ailment at veterinary clinics and hospitals.
“We get as many as eight to 10 cases a month. Even more so at a hospital because smaller operations are not equipped with dialysis facilities,” points out Dr Prathaban. “The illness that caused the weakness may have happened even a year earlier. But once there is a kidney injury, it becomes progressive if left untreated.”
Take for instance a recent case of a seven-year-old golden retriever from Hyderabad that was brought down because a severe case of anaemia. “The damage to the kidney happened in a matter of five days, possibly due to the alteration of blood flow to the organ,” recalls M Chandrasekar, associate professor of the Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine, TANUVAS.
The patient was so weak, it was barely conscious and had to be treated in the Intensive Care Unit. Ten hours later however, it was back on its feet, tail wagging. Bark once if that sounds like a miracle to you. The best part is it doesn’t come with the cost of a new kidney.
Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy is priced at `1,000 at the Madras Veterinary University.