Doctors remove bamboo stick from dog’s heart
Published: February 4, 2006
It’s not very often that doctors at the University of Florida’s Pediatric Congenital Heart Disease Center and its Veterinary Medical Center share a patient.
But it’s not very often that a pooch like Yankee the Labrador skewers her heart after eating a steak-laden bamboo stick, either.
In a happy ending to a rare and freakish medical case, Yankee left the Gainesville, Fla., animal hospital Friday to return home to Satellite Beach - but not before leaving veterinarians and physicians amazed.
Yankee’s accident brought together experts in pediatric and veterinary cardiology, as well as faculty and staff from both human and animal hospitals.
“It was surprising when we saw it, I’ll tell you that,” said veterinarian Nikki Hackendahl, an internal-medicine resident at the University of Florida Veterinary Medical Center in Gainesville.
The 7-year-old lab was seriously ill when she was brought to Hackendahl’s center last month with a mysterious malady. They were stunned when an echocardiogram showed a chunk of wood skewer lodged in her heart, the result of the dog wolfing down a steak kebab - stick and all - last Halloween.
Swallowing the kebab began a medical saga lasting about three months that saw doctors at the University of Florida Pediatric Congenital Heart Disease Center - whose patients normally have two legs - performing open-heart surgery on the dog and ended with Yankee going home with owners Mary and Vince Stazzone.
Yankees’ lead surgeon, pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Mark Bleiwess, performed a three-hour procedure Jan. 27 using the Heart Center’s equipment - including a heart-bypass machine - to remove the skewer and rebuild the dog’s heart valve.
At least 10 doctors assisted in some way, and clinicians from both hospitals jumped in to help, as did faculty from both schools.
“If a child would have had something like this done, it could have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Mary Stazzone. “We only have to pay the vet bills.”
Those added up to $6,000, she said.
Yankee’s illness baffled veterinarians at the animal emergency hospital, who had successfully operated to remove part of the skewer in early November. They assumed the dog had chewed up and passed the other half or vomited it. There was no sign of it on X-rays or CT scans, since neither can detect wood.
The new illness seemed unrelated: The veterinarians thought Yankee might have bone-marrow cancer, because she was so anemic, and they referred the case to the UF veterinary hospital.
Desperate after having spent about $9,000 on the first surgery and related treatment, the Stazzones took Yankee to Gainesville. There, veterinary cardiologist Dr. Amara Estrada gave the pooch the echocardiogram.
“We noticed a strange linear structure in the heart,” she said.
Knowing that Yankee’s heart would have to be stopped and that the equipment at the animal hospital wouldn’t give doctors as much time as the heart-bypass machine at the Heart Center across the street, Estrada mentioned the case to colleagues at the human hospital. They rallied to help.
The medical measures might seem extreme for a pet, but Yankee has belonged to the Stazzones since before they were a family.
Mary Stazzone bought the dog for her husband, who works in the insurance industry, when they were dating. The couple now has three daughters, 5, 3 and 1.
“She’s doing great,” Mary Stazzone said after picking up Yankee Friday. “She’s all shaved and has staples, but she’s wagging her tail.”
As for Yankee, “she seems brighter,” Hackendahl said. “But even sick, she came in here wagging her tail. That’s just a Labrador’s personality.”
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