Mountain lion Sequoia passed away Sunday night after complications from a spay surgery.
CMZoo Mourns the Loss of Sequoia, Young Mountain Lion
20 years ago when I was still breeding dogs, our 7-year-old male, Pogo, had a femoral head osteotomy (FHO) after he suffered a broken hip. It was apparent from the start that something was wrong with the suture line. Even with multiple antibiotics, the infection worsened. Since Pogo had been diagnosed with multiple allergies at 2 and I had given him two years of allergy desensitization shots, I was pretty quick to suspect a suture allergy. This was so rare, however, that the vets thought it unlikely. As the wound worsened and the whole leg was warm and swollen, drains were placed. Finally, when nothing was helping, I insisted they go in and at least look at and maybe replace the sutures under the skin. I was in the OR and will never forget how "angry" the area looked (extremely red and swollen) making the suture line seem like it was bursting, all in addition to copious amounts of pus. My vet replaced the original Vicryl sutures with a different kind and flushed the whole area. Within a week, the leg looked totally normal for a post-op FHO.
I wanted to describe this, because there are many who simply don't believe that animals could have an allergy to what are considered non-allergic materials. Several vets doing surgery on my dogs over the last 20 years haven't believed suture allergy could have been the cause. That particular brand, Vicryl, was also "ribbed" with tiny barbs to help it grip the tissue, which served to literally cut into the flesh as it swelled up around the sutures. At every surgery since, about 25 (at least half C-sections and with several new and highly specialized surgeons), there is still general disbelief that animals can be allergic to suture material.
Only in the last three years, has a surgeon acknowledged that Vicryl was known for its allergic reactions and reports that no one uses it any more. I've had no problems since, but then, I also demand that Vicryl not be used. I don't think this is taken nearly seriously enough. I'm sure there was similar disbelief for a long time that people could be allergic to latex. That was finally taken seriously because it affected humans, who could describe what they felt. But vet sutures are far more dangerous; they're inside the body where their symptoms can be neither seen or described until it's so bad as to be potentially fatal. SUTURE ALLERGY IS VERY REAL.
