Page 285 - Clinical Manual of Small Animal Endosurgery

Chapter 10

Small Exotic Animal

Endosurgery

Romain Pizzi

Introduction

Rigid endoscopy has been well established in avian medicine since the
1970s when it was first used for surgical sexing. It is only more recently
that endoscopy has become increasingly utilised in general exotic animal
practice in reptiles and small pet mammals. While some endosurgical
procedures are well described in the laboratory animal literature, these
are often more of use as models for human diseases, than in the types
of condition encountered in small pet mammals. The author has yet to
see a clinical indication for a Nissen fundoplication in a pet rabbit. Much
emphasis is placed on the minimally invasive nature of endosurgery, but
the enhanced visualisation, the access to parts of the body and structures
difficult to visualise in open surgery, and provision of excellent illumina-
tion are also of great benefit to the surgeon working with small exotic
species.
In these patients it is possible to perform not only techniques and
applications identical to those used in canines and felines, but also other
specific procedures, thanks to differing anatomy and the unique disease
conditions encountered. Diagnostic endosurgery is particularly useful in
species where other imaging modalities are limited due to the species
anatomy. Ultrasonographic examination of the rabbit, guinea pig and
chinchilla abdomen, for instance, is limited by the voluminous gas-
containing caecum, while in birds the air sacs prove a similar limitation.
Radiography may similarly not demonstrate small liver metastasis from
a primary uterine adenocarcinoma in a rabbit, or small Aspergillus
fungal air-sac plaques in a parrot; and the osteoderms in the scales of a

Clinical Manual of Small Animal Endosurgery, First Edition. Edited by Alasdair Hotston Moore and
Rosa Angela Ragni.
© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.