While I was away I have been pondering what to tackle in my new posts as so many things got my attention... after all I have changed the name of my blog to "a life and medical journey" so now I can talk about pretty much anything that takes my fancy.
So here is what I read about recently, joining two of my biggest passions: cats and medicine.
Meet Oscar, the bionic cat!!!
Oscar is a very lucky pet... while napping in a field, completely unaware of a combine harvester heading his direction, the poor kitty got his back paws chopped off by the machine...
Had these been other times he would have been put to sleep, but in this day and age there is hope, even for a cat!
So, during an ingenious world-first operation and state-of-the-art bioengineering procedure, his little paws were reattached... well, not exactly reattached but rather more rebuilt!
A neuro-orthopaedic veterinary surgeon created new kitten heels for Oscar which mimic the way in which deer antler bone grows through skin. These prosthetic parts are called ITAPs (Intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics) and are like pegs which get attached to the bones and covered in hydroxyapatite, a substance which encourages bone cells to regrow.
I have actually learnt about this during my 1st year as med-student and was delighted (to say the least) to see the name on an article and especially to remember what that was!!!
The skin then had to grow over the end of the pegs forming a barrier against bacteria and infections and Oscar had to learn to walk again (which for the joy of his owners, wasn't too difficult) and is now back to almost normal life.
Many of you may think that such a degree of specialisation for a veterinary surgery is wasted time and money (yes, believe it or not, I heard that comment!!!)
I don't agree, a life is a life, but to defend the cause it is certainly worth mentioning that this pioneering technique developed by a vet for our furry friends, has been adopted by human surgeons as well and is now in use to provide limb prostheses for human amputees.
I remember when I was a kid there was a TV series called "The bionic man", I never thought I'd see "The bionic cat" as well but I'm definitely happy to know it joined the family! :-)
1 comment:
Cool cat! And so long as it was funded privately, fine. I hope it wasn't funded by my taxes though.
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