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Bionic surgery for animals is becoming more common
It must be cutting edge veterinary surgery week, because I come bearing yet another story about futuristic procedures being performed on domesticated cats. This time, MSNBC has the scoop on a story straight out of “The Bionic Woman” or “Star Wars”: Oscar the Robo-Cat.
Black cat Oscar may have had some bad luck in October 2009 when he lost his two back feet in an accident with a combine harvester, but this past summer he reversed that by being one of the first cats to receive metallic limbs. When Oscar, who hails from the British Channel Isles, had his accident, his vet referred his owners to a neuro-orthopedic surgeon in Eashing, U.K.
Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick teamed up with two biomedical engineering experts and fashioned two metal prosthetic implants to serve Oscar in the place of his missing bones. At the ends are two custom-built metal paws, designed to be flexible so as to imitate the way a cat walks.
The artificial limbs are actually fused to Oscar’s bone and skin. The implants were drilled into Oscar’s remaining rear ankle bones and then covered in a substance that allows the bone cells to grow over the implants. Oscar’s skin can then develop overtop that, which prevents infection. After only four months of rehab Oscar’s back on his feet, able to walk as normally as possible and even capable of jumping over hurdles like toilet paper rolls.
I’m completely floored by this story. I didn’t realize technology like this existed, and I’m surprised to hear of it being used on animals, not humans. Both Fitzgerald and Oscar’s owners Mike and Kate Nolan hope that Oscar’s success story will help further research for human prosthetics.
Some similar work has been done with people, but since it’s so rare I’m surprised it’s leaked into veterinary medicine before being fully utilized for humans. I suppose that until the technology is perfected it won’t become commonplace, and doctors are more comfortable trying out prototypes on animals than on humans.
There are risks to this kind of surgery. Given the newness of the technology, we don’t have enough data yet to study the long-term effects of prosthetics like Oscar’s. Oscar’s vets will have to monitor him closely to make sure that he still does not succumb to infection, that the rubbing of his implants on his skin do not create any sores, and that his movement does not become impaired.
Even if Oscar does not encounter any major problems with his prosthetics, they might not last more than a few years. However, those few years of pain-free mobility were important to his owners the Nolan’s, which is why they went through with the procedure.
Obviously creating metal prosthetics for animals is a very new and thus expensive process (Oscar’s implants alone cost about $3000 to make, and that’s not counting the price of the surgery), but it’s so cool to know that such technology is being developed for humans and animals alike.
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*(This image by frankenstoen is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
