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A rare operation was performed at the university animal clinic
The doctors of the animal clinic of the Estonian University of Life Sciences faced a difficult task this week: a month-old alpaca lamp weighing less than ten kilos was brought from Pärnu Alpaca farm. She could no longer stand up.
The examinations revealed that the spinal cord of the animal had been injured as a result of the trauma and a complex surgery was required. The procedure was complicated by the fact that the doctors of the university's animal clinic had never operated on alpacas with spinal cord trauma before. According to Alexander Semyonov, the clinical director of the animal clinic, such an operation on such a young alpaca has not been performed in the whole of Europe.
The surgery with examinations lasted from 3 p.m. to midnight on Tuesday. Even at the beginning of the operation, the doctors were not sure whether the animal would withstand the operation under general anesthesia and artificial respiration. However, barely a day after arriving in Tartu, the alpaca had recovered from the operation and its condition was stable.
Doctors hope that the patient should be able to stand up again within two weeks. But as with spinal cord surgery: complete success will only become apparent later.