We had to make an aggressive
incision. Despite the fact that
the seed was relatively small
there was just too much
damage.

This picture doesn't do
justice to the amount
of swelling that occurred after surgery.

Well, this won’t be your typical BLOG entry but will be more of a place for me to share the near tragedy we had during the past two weeks. You’ll notice in the last BLOG entry that Maggie had developed an abscess on her side, which was drained and flushed. Well, about two weeks into the antibiotics, she again developed a firm swelling over her ribs, and I was highly suspicious of a migrating plant piece.

I scheduled to perform surgery last Wednesday with my good friend, Dr. Tom Rentshcler, at his clinic. Shortly after I made my incision, I knew things were not good, as there was so much damage and inflammation that nothing was identifiable. In short order, I was between her ribs and at that time handed things over to Tom. We ended up removing a large amount of tissue and during the procedure had entered her chest cavity. Thankfully, the last cut Tom made contained the migrating plant seed (it appeared to be from a Canada Rye plant) and hopefully the source of our problems. The x-rays after surgery showed a large amount of air in her chest, which we promptly removed. She recovered quickly from the anesthesia and I decided to do all post-op monitoring at home. We had two episodes of hemorrhage the first night and no sleep on my part…I was not too optimistic. A recheck of the x-rays in the morning showed improvement, and her complete blood count remained normal. I overnighted some samples to Iowa State for analysis and started her on a broad spectrum of antibiotics.  She gradually improved bit by bit each day.

A week and one day later, she’s doing great, and some of the swelling is starting to subside. We are still waiting for the final results from the lab, but we do know there are three different types of bacteria involved, one of which is Nocardia, an anaerobic bacteria common in migrating plant cases. It will likely be months before I’ll feel like we’re completely out of the woods, but at this point I’m just happy the little setter is still with us!!!

This makes for the third injury she's had this year that are all firsts in my career, and most veterinarians will go entire careers without seeing any of these injuries. While not incredibly common, migrating plant pieces are a very real risk to sporting breeds. Typically the most common plants involved are foxtails, spear grass, cheaters grass, and (in this case) plant seeds. These plant awns or seeds enter the body either from being inhaled or through the skin. The key to successful treatment is early and aggressive treatment. By no means are we completely out of the woods, but thankfully we're now on the right path.