We are proud to share with you that Dr Philip Simon holds a Healing Heart Award from the Veterinary Wound Library (VWL) for a case that was under his care.
With the help and support of the VWL a very nasty wound the top of a Pugs head was able to be fixed utilising a number of techniques involving dressings and surgery. This was a long process but thanks to all the hard work from everyone involved in his care we achieved a great result.
We don’t know what caused the wound to develop, possibly a cat bite / scratch from his house mate we suspect? The infection had caused the skin to die on top of the dogs head, once the skin came away a large hole was present, the under lying tissue was not there and his skull was visible.
Firstly we had to protect and clean the visible bone, this was done using a tie over dressing which we could untie, change and re-apply.
The second step was to surgically correct the deficit with a skin flap. Once we had a clean surgical site with some lovely granulation tissue we could plan the surgery. A long flap of skin from the patients neck was rotated to fill the wound on his head. An active suction drain was placed and managed following the surgery.
After this type of surgery we expect to lose around 10% of the far edge of the skin flap, we always keep a close eye on these.
As the fur on the neck grows in a different direction to the top of the head we anticipated this patient having a quiff once the fur grew back! His owners were excited to see what this would look like, adding even more character to this little guy. This is a few months after the surgery!
It was great to see him make such a quick recovery from such a nasty wound. A few months later when he came back in for his annual check up we were amazed by the extent of the quiff!
