Original subtitles

This is Glasgow University's Animal Hospital, one of the best veterinary

hospitals in the world.

The specialists here have the equipment and the expertise to treat the animals

other vets can't help.

They're leaders in their field, saving lives against all odds.

Today, Annette needs to act quickly to save the life of Mac, who's been rushed

in suffering from seizures.

Ian's looking after much -loved family cat Chico because she's been coughing up

blood. Her owners are faced with a tough decision.

And Surgeon Catherine needs to carry out an urgent operation on a Labrador

called Panther, who's struggling to breathe.

Sooner or later you hit a point where they obstruct and they don't recover.

choke to death.

An emergency case arrives at Glasgow State of the Art Vet Hospital.

Alan Koops is Doc Mac.

has been having seizures all day.

Two -year -old Mac was diagnosed with meningitis here three

months ago.

Alan's been giving him medication at home.

German neurologist Annette Westman rushes to the scene.

What I'm going to do, I'll take my throne. Yeah.

If you don't mind to wait here. And then once he's in good hands there, I'll

probably come back to speak to you about everything.

Yeah?

Okay.

Mac's a member of our family. He's not just a dog.

He's somebody that doesn't have animals, probably doesn't understand, but he is

like a child to us because we don't have any children.

He is our family.

If Mac doesn't stop fitting soon, he could suffer brain damage.

Annette must give him anti -seizure drugs fast.

They need to get an intravenous line

into Mac's veins to give him the drugs.

It's tough getting access to Mac's kind of things.

The line's finally in, and Mac is given the anti -seizure drugs he badly needs.

Mac's been stabilized, but it's still early days.

His seizures may be caused by meningitis, and they could get worse.

Another much -loved pet arrives.

Gus and Liz Kincaid have brought in 17 -year -old cat Chico, who's been part of

their family for nearly a decade.

Chico's been coughing blood.

Her local vet has referred her to the specialists here.

We're hoping they come up with an answer, but we don't know.

We are... She is old, so we're not expecting miracles, but we're hoping.

Something happens.

But Chico has quite a temper.

The vets will have to watch out.

She was a very quiet, withdrawn cat.

But recently, because of what has happened to her, when she goes into a

becomes a tiger.

She growls and roars and doesn't let anyone do anything to her. She has to be

sedated to have any procedure carried out.

Hello. I know. We met last year.

That's right.

Chico.

Chico's being seen by Professor Ian Ramsey.

As you've been, certainly things might be going on.

Well, as I mentioned, the smaller intestine is showing it's slightly

than they would have thought it should have been.

for a cat of her age, and it could be a cancer, not normally to cats.

Ian needs to investigate.

He's treated this feisty cat before, so knows to sedate her first.

I'm a great believer in not fighting cats. They have all the advantages.

The teeth.

They have absolutely no code of ethics. The one advantage I have is drugs.

So I think that's what we should use, is to give her a little something, just to

quieten everything down.

Then I can have a good look at her. I like to get some of my own blood samples

to see what's happened in the last week, because I think this is a progressing

situation. I really have grave fears this time as to what you're going to

do.

Annette's been called into the emergency treatment room.

Mac has taken a turn for the worse.

Let me just listen to the heart.

Look at that. The pupils are really small.

You see the small pupils here?

That's a bit of a concern. That is not good.

That gives me some indication that there could be problems with the pressure

inside of the brain.

Not good. I don't like that.

Mac's brain may be swelling.

compressing the region which controls pupil size.

It's not responsive very much, so it's not surprising.

The

change

in cranial pressure may be due to max meningitis getting worse.

Annette's going to update his owner, Alan.

I certainly wouldn't want him to suffer. My mind would be that I wouldn't want

him resuscitated if the prognosis for him wasn't very good.

Appreciate a phone call to ask if we wanted that to happen.

It doesn't matter what time of day or night it is.

For Mac and Alan, the next few hours are crucial.

Coming up, Chico's ultrasound reveals why she's been coughing up blood.

So that potentially is a mass within a small intestine.

And Mac takes a turn for the worst in ICU.

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In the Glasgow Vet Hospital Intensive Care Unit, neurologist Annette's

monitoring Mac, a two -year -old dog brought in suffering from meningitis

-induced seizures.

It looked as if the anti -seizure drugs had worked as Mac stopped fitting and

his pupils returned to normal size.

But worryingly, his fits have just started again.

He goes into another fit now.

With the twitching, you see it's twitching again. It looks to me like a

So we need to give another drug, another injection of the drug. Hopefully that

calms him down again a bit better.

Can you give me another ball?

Annette is still hopeful Matt can recover.

Sometimes with seizures, it looks very bad in the moment, and then a few weeks

later they're happy again and they run around and the drug works.

I hope it's just a dip just now, but sometimes we just don't know.

Unfortunately, dogs die from those things as well when they have meningitis

other reasons for seizures.

It's better now, huh?

Mac will continue to be closely monitored.

It's an anxious time for owner Alan.

All of the family are concerned about him.

We've been having phone calls from members of the family, and he's well

everybody, and it's just concerning for everybody that he's not doing so well.

Ian's about to sedate Chico before an ultrasound scan to investigate why she's

been coughing blood.

Chico's usually very feisty when handled.

That was relatively painless. That's not the Chico of old. I think that Chico

has allowed me to do this because she's ill.

Normally she would have been more aggressive than this, but the fact that

even allowed me to get in there and pick her out is a pretty good indication

that she's feeling pretty rough.

Chico's devoted owners, Gus and Liz, hope Ian can cure her.

When your animal takes ill, it affects your life. It does. It takes over.

You don't like them. You don't like them being ill because they don't

understand. How can you tell a cat, I've got to starve you for 10 hours? They

don't understand.

All they want is their food. I find that very upsetting.

Over in the equine centre, clinician David Sutton waits for a new patient to

arrive.

David's been a vet for 16 years.

The personal satisfaction I get is from working with large animals.

And that points me very much towards horses because you have the opportunity

work with these individual animals, often doing quite intensive medicine,

a lot of investigation.

And they're just great personalities to work with. I've never, ever regretted

working with horses.

I get a lot of satisfaction from doing it.

David's new patient is Timmy, who's been off his food and difficult to ride for

over a year.

Local vets couldn't diagnose why, so his riders Vivian and Alexandra have

brought him here.

When he pees, before he needs to pee, he goes really tight over his back,

doesn't he? He doesn't want to go forward.

And he went to show he was worse because we thought, well, maybe it's a nervous

thing. Just when he's ridden? Yeah, just when he's ridden.

So I thought we'd had maybe an underlying minor kidney infection or

but there's something not right and I can't put my finger on it.

I think what we'll do now is let's take his rug off and then we'll take him

round to room number two.

David starts his investigations.

He's concerned about Timmy's digestive system, which doesn't sound like it

should.

That's been faster since late afternoon yesterday, and his gut's still quite

noisy, which is maybe a little bit surprising.

He's possibly just a little bit anxious, though, having come in, which might

make him a bit noisier.

But generally they get noisy if there's gas building up or starch being

fermented, which will make them uncomfortable.

David's going to do a gastroscopy, inserting a camera to view Timmy's

Alexandra hopes that will solve the mystery of what's causing Timmy's

It is worrying when they get ill because they can't...

Tell us what's wrong, but I wish they could.

It'd be a lot easier and save a lot of time.

But, yeah, hopefully we'll find out today.

Ian's about to do Chico's blood tests and ultrasound scan, but he can't hang

about. In 20 minutes, her sedative will wear off.

We're going to do a range of about 30 tests.

on this blood for all organ functions, salt levels, blood levels of white blood

cells, red blood cells, look for diabetes, look for kidney, liver

This blood is fairly precious to Fico, so we don't want to have to do this, go

through all this again, so I'll try and get as much as I can this time around.

Chico's ultrasonographer is Alison King.

Alison spotted something unusual.

So I'm not very happy with this area here.

Small intestine should be nice. Everything should be nice and regular

have this nice normal shape. And that's eight millimetres thick, which is much

thicker than it should be. And also we don't have a nice fall layering within

it. So that potentially is a mass within the small intestine stomach.

The tests are finished promptly, as Chico's sedative is already wearing off.

The conclusion of that is that Chico has a

mass. in the small intestine. The most likely cause of that mass is a tumor, a

cancer. But it appears to also have a lymph node next door, which is

enlarged. Possibly this represents spread of the tumor.

Another life and death case has just arrived.

Twelve -year -old family dog Panther is sedated.

before her throat is examined.

Panther recently collapsed three times at home.

On each occasion, it has got worse.

Her owner Angie hopes the vets can do something before it's too late.

The first one was about two months ago, but we thought she had just slipped on

the kitchen floor.

She just went onto her side and got straight back up again.

And the same happened again about two weeks later.

Again, we thought she'd slipped on the kitchen floor. And then about three

ago, she went out into that garden and that seemed really strange.

She went onto her side and she was in full seizure at that point for about

minutes.

The vets think Panther's larynx, or voice box, may occasionally be blocking

airway.

Animal surgeon Catherine Pratchka wants to take a closer look.

Yeah, so she's getting her own vocal folds moving inwards as she breathes in.

So she's, I think, getting to the point of having almost paradoxical motion

where instead of opening as she breathes in, it's closing.

Yeah,

so when she's panting even, sort of as she pants in, we're getting the larynx

moving inwards instead of outwards.

Panther's larynx problems are life -threatening.

Once laryngeal paralysis is there, it doesn't go away. It just continues to

worse. And you have quite a long period of time where they're able to compensate

and cope. But then you hit a point where they decompensate and stresses that

they were able to cope with before is just too much. And they literally

completely.

And the concern is that...

Sooner or later you hit a point where they obstruct and they don't recover.

can't cope with it and they effectively asphyxiate. They choke to death.

Catherine will need to operate as soon as possible to stitch Panther's larynx

one side to stop it blocking her airway.

Ian has a tough phone call to make.

Chico's been part of the Kincaid family life for most of her 17 years.

What we found on ultrasound, I'm afraid, was not very good news.

There is a lump of tissue in her small intestine just

as it comes out of the stomach. It looks like it's some sort of tumor.

There is a lymph node nearby that looks unusual, and it may have gone to that

lymph node.

Okay.

And I think that will explain why Chico is vomiting, why she's losing weight,

and why there's blood in the vomit.

Really, it's a question about what you want to do at this stage. The way I see

it is that there are really two options.

The first is, and I know this is an old cat, but you ought to consider this, is

to ask a surgeon to try to take that tumor,

out but he is an old cat he's very thin and the other

option is to say let's not mess her around anymore and say you know enough's

enough and it's it's probably time to think about having her put to sleep it's

very hard to advise you which one's the right thing to do i i think both courses

are right okay

Okay, I'm sorry then. Okay, thanks. Okay, thanks, bye.

Chico's owners have asked for time to think about it.

If this was my cat, I would find this a very hard call to make.

And I'm not just saying that. It genuinely would be a very hard decision

you've got something there that's potentially treatable, but on the other

you've got a very, very old cat.

And when I said to the owner, there's...

It's difficult to know what the right decision is. The truth is they're both

right. Both going for and trying and failing but never trying at all

are both right decisions at this point. There isn't a wrong decision.

And I think it very much depends on what your gut instinct and that of feelings.

People talk about ethics. This is ethics in action.

David's investigations into Timmy's problems yield an intriguing

And in intensive care, Max starts to behave

rather strangely.