ALSF POST Summer Student Blog – Veterinary Research

Image 1: a patient recovering from anesthesia.  Anesthesia plays a significant role in animal imaging. Unlike in human medicine, veterinarians are unable to impart the importance of staying still during scans. For this reason, anesthetics are used to sedate patients during procedures to assure an accurate diagnosis from clear scans, as well as to protect the safety of both the patient and the veterinary team. Anesthetic agents sedate patients by depressing various biological functions, including heart and respiratory rates. As such, approval for a procedure requiring anesthesia is only granted once a patient is determined to be stable enough to handle sedation. Pre-existing conditions can make a patient more susceptible to complications while under anesthesia, and may require additional precautions or a delay in the procedure until their condition has improved. The first step of the anesthesia process is induction. Patients are given a combination of analgesics and short-term seda...

Last week, I had the opportunity to watch a surgical technique that is currently being optimized for treatment of severe obesity. It was fascinating to observe, so I thought I'd share some of the highlights! But first, some background. The general technique, which involves the delivery of an agent that blocks blood flow through the target artery via a catheter, is known as arterial embolization. This procedure is already used in other applications such as stopping internal hemorrhaging. It's a neat concept, for a few reasons. The first is that  only a minor incision is required, making it less intense compared to more invasive surgeries. Secondly, surgeons performing this procedure utilize real-time imaging techniques (such as X-rays) to guide the catheter through the cardiovascular system to deliver the drug with high precision. Recently, teams of researchers, doctors, and veterinarians (including my mentor and CIGAT director, Dr. Kraitchman) have developed a new application o...