HONG KONG: A veterinarian at Tufts University has figured out how to give a dog his face back after a severe accident.
Randy Boudrieau, a veterinary orthopedist, is using titanium plates, just like the ones used in human reconstructive surgery, to repair hair fractures in canine companions. The fractures are most commonly seen when a (human) driver flies through the windshield of a vehicle, but are occasionally seen in dogs after severe accidents like being hit by a car.
Because these injuries are rarely seen, most vets don’t know how to fix them, so many dogs are left to heal slowly and painfully on their own, with only cover-all medicines like anti-inflammatories and pain relievers to treat them. Some dogs have their skulls wired back together if their bone fragments are big enough – that is, if they haven’t shattered into tiny pieces – but neither process gives enough relief to a dog whose facial bones have broken into many small segments.
In humans, the accepted method for treating broken bones is to keep them from moving around. That’s why we use casts, splints, and braces, but when bones are broken into many small parts, the job is much harder.
Take it from Boudrieau , who spent a year in a cast after she shattered her elbow (spoiler: it was awful). So, when people suffer facial fractures, doctors attach metal plates to the pieces of facial bone that are the thickest and biggest – and then attach the smaller pieces to them. As a result, the bones move as little as possible, and when they do move around, they do so as basically one unit.
Finding those thicker and bigger fragments isn’t too hard – they were initially discovered in humans in 1980, when fancily-named physical anthropologist E. Lloyd Du Brol shone a light through a (vacant) human skull and saw which pieces let the least light through. It was rudimentary, but it worked. Surgeons still use Du Brol’s findings today, even if they’ve never heard of him.
