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The Golden Retriever has a painful gangrenous tail 4/5

2,163 views · Published 9 March 2014 · 2:52 · Indexed 19 October 2026

Channel: Dr David Sing · 2014 · Pets & Animals

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In this surgery of tail amputation, I placed a tourniquet and then amputated more than10 cm away from the dead gangrenous tail. The whole area would be badly infected and toxic and more than 10 cm (not 3 cm) further from the gangrenous area would be healthier tissue.

I used the markeer pen to outline two "V" shaped markings on the side of both tails. The base of the "V" pointed left. The upper end of the sideway V is longer than the lower end to form a skin flap to cover the tail. I tried to locate the joint to dislocate the tail and discard the gangrenous stump but it was not easy to find the joint. I used a bone cutter to snip off the bones and exposed the joint.

I undermined the skin around the stump and placed 3 ligatures on the lateral sides and on the ventral side of the tail to tie up the 3 blood vessels to prevent bleeding after removal of the tourniquet. The V-shaped flap was stitched at 3 mm distances and bandaged by Dr Daniel.

The gas anaesthesia was minimal as this dog had recovered from heat stress and was not in perfect health as the tail was black last week and now dried up grey. In theory, I should wait for one week but the dog was in severe danger of being toxic. Since he is active now, I decided to operate on this Sunday afternoon as an emergency if the owners consented. Anaesthetic risks were low, in my assessment, if minimal anaesthesia using isoflurane is given. .

The whole surgery took around one hour as the dog moved and squirted anal sac oil onto my chest area at one stage. I had the dog from 0 - 5% gas to effect and as the tail was very painful, the dog got out of the analgesic stage at various times andb I had to stop while he was given more gas. This took up much time but was a safer method than a steady 2.5% gas maintenance in normal dogs with normal or recently injured tails. 

This dog was not normal as the tail was black and gangrenous. So anaesthesia gas had to be minimal to prevent heart failure.  When the dog was deep asleep, the gas was switched down to 0.5% or 0%. The tail was very painful and so the dog would move when the analgeia wore off fast. So, time would be spent on stabilising the dog under 5% gas again. In this way of minimal dose, the dog would not die on the operating table but surgery took a longer time.  The dog woke up within 3 minutes after end of surgery as contrasted to more than 30 minutes in normal cases.

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