Conejo Valley Veterinary Hospital misdiagnosed and preformed a pricey and unnecessary surgery on our puppy!!! This is super long, but please read if you have a puppy dealing with post-op spay swelling... Read More
Conejo Valley Veterinary Hospital misdiagnosed and preformed a pricey and unnecessary surgery on our puppy!!! This is super long, but please read if you have a puppy dealing with post-op spay swelling!!Ten days after we got our 4 month old female Saint Bernard puppy spayed (from a different vet clinic) we began to notice a lump developing near her incision site. We decided to get her examined on a Sunday at CVVH, when our original vet was not open. After pushing around the lump, the vet told us they were almost positive that the lump was a hernia and our puppy needed another surgery.The vet explained that during a spay operation two incisions are made: through the outer layer of skin, and the abdominal wall. After the procedure is complete, the vet uses dissolving stitches to close the abdominal wall and then uses glue stitches to close the outer layer of skin. The vet said that our puppy's "spay surgery had failed" and that the inner incision had reopened and that her intestines or other organ has come through the abdominal wall, causing a hernia. We were given a quote around $550. The vet who did the examination told us that they would not be available to preform the surgery but consulted with another vet who said, "let's do it". We dropped her off in the morning, and then received a text message from the vet around 2pm saying "Please call me if you would like to have a gastroplexy performed at the time of the hernia repair... This will prevent GDV in the future. Now is the time to do it as we will already have the abdominal wall open to repair the hernia. We are starting the surgery now. I usually offer this at time of spay for this breed because they are at higher risk for GDV." Background: Gastropexy is a preventative and elective surgery, which tacks the stomach to the abdominal wall preventing the stomach from flipping which is a high risk for large breed dogs. We consented to this surgery as we were completely under the impression that the abdominal wall was already open- hence, hernia.A couple hours later we received a call from the vet who preformed the surgery letting us know that the surgery was finished and it wasn't a hernia but a seroma and they went ahead and preformed a Gastropexy as we consented to. A seroma is the build up of fluid caused by the empty space between the muscle and skin. While a seroma is not necessarily a good thing after a spay surgery, it is extremely common and DOES NOT NEED SURGERY. The most aggressive treatment when dealing with a seroma is to drain it, which many vets think is unnecessary and it should heal on its own. A seroma also means that the spay incision had held, and the abdominal cavity was closed.1) The initial vet misdiagnosed a mild/extremely common post-spay condition with a much more serious issue that needed surgical repair. The vet mentioned no other possible causes, and did not offer any options/tests to rule out other less serious conditions before invasive surgery.2) The vet who preformed the surgery realized it was not a hernia, and continued to cut open her abdomen to preform the elective surgery (which we only consented to during a HERNIA REPAIR). We were not given updated information, and had we known this was a different complication, we would never chosen to preform an invasive surgery 10 days after the initial surgery (which obviously wasn't healed completely in the first place). We were asked at a moment of weakness and agreed under the belief that her abdomen was already open. After further researching the Gastropexy surgery, we have found that this procedure can be done laparoscopically, which is obviously preferable unless the abdominal wall was already open.It has only been a couple days since the surgery, and our sweet puppy is THANKFULLY doing ok. The new incision is 5 times as large as the initial spay incision, and we are having to heavily sedate her for the next two weeks.I have decided to emit names, because I do understand human errors are part of life. We ended up receiving about $100 off the $1500 total procedure, which if diagnosed correctly would not have even been necessary. Read Less