Endoscopy for Dogs & Cats
Endoscopes are not devices we use frequently in veterinary science, but when we do, they are enormously useful. Mostly, we use endoscopy in the upper gut for biopsy.
This creates some problems, because an endoscope that has a biopsy channel is hard to get below a certain size, and virtually all of them are made for a bigger species called homo sapiens.
Try using a 9.8 mm endoscope made for adult humans in a small dog or a cat. Turning corners is a bit like running a Double B truck in a Coles carpark. But..we can manage. Lesions in animals are more reliant on biopsy than humans. We drink more alcohol for instance, and so often have more visually flagrant lesions.
With animals you have to try and pluck representative bits of mucosa and sub-mucosa (stomach and duodenal lining) at right angles to the turned endoscope tip from what can be normal looking tissue, and this can be tricky.
The other use in the upper digestive system for endoscopes is grabbing foreign bodies jammed in the oesophagus, which since its journey is down the chest, is very risky via surgical exposure techniques. Lifting foreign bodies from the stomach can be very difficult if they have eaten at the same time, as navigating a full stomach with a scope is a bit like raising a periscope in a sewerage system. Not very practical.
Assessing airways with an endoscope (rechristened a bronchoscope on that day) can be a good way of assessing airway problems like collapsing tracheas, or finding tears in the windpipe from dog attack or other trauma. Mostly though we use it to direct a long catheter to use saline to get samples of bronchial disorders where the windpipe divides up to serve the lobes of the lung. And occasionally, once every 4th or 5th blue moon, there really is something “stuck in the throat”, and it can be retrieved with little clamps fed down the biopsy channel.
Laparoscopy is something that is used a lot in human surgery to reduce the need for long incisions for surgical access. We have all heard of laparoscopic prostate removals for instance, which is a very delicate job of several hours duration. Laparoscopic surgery is rarely undertaken in veterinary facilities, because a standard laparotomy is a lot quicker, and dogs and cats arent as concerned about being able to wear a bikini as some of our 2 legged friends are.
But there are a few instances where a lapscope gives you a much better surgical review than a laparotomy does. It is magnified, very well lit, and can get into corners like liver lobes better than a surgeons hand can. This is more about diagnosis than correction. There are a few vets, and one in Melbourne who does some types of brain surgery with a lapscope, who do correctional procedures with this technology, but mostly it is about grabbing bits of abdominal tissue and dropping it into formalin for a pathologist to put a name onto it. We do it, occasionally.