Low down on Ex Laps
@carnival-phantasm said to @ask-drferox: Hello doctor! I'm aware that every big surgical intervention has many risks but I was wondering: in relatively healthy (normal blood tests, hydrated, running, normal blood tension, no chronic diseases, etc), 10 year old dogs, how dangerous are exploratory laparotomies? The vets where my mother and dog live don't do laparoscopy, only laparotomy, and the vet wants to check an unidentified liver growth based on ultrassound results but changed subjects when my mom asked about risks...
So here’s the thing: An exploratory laparotomy just means we’re opening up the abdomen to have a look around. Exploratory = explore, laparotomy = abdominal cavity. That part’s fine, it’s risks are similar to those of a spey.
But that liver growth? If it turns into a liver lobectomy (removing the affected lobe of the liver) that could be where all the risks come in.
We call it an exploratory laparotomy (ex lap) when we don’t know what we’re going to find. Then we find something and perform something else.
A big risk is that you go to surgery and you find a mass you can’t remove, or multiple smaller masses on the surface of every organ which were too small to detect on ultrasound but visible with the naked eye, and you know it’s a malignant cancer. Then you will be asked what you want to do, whether you want to let this animal wake up, or go on the table.
If those normal blood tests included clotting times, that’s looking safer for potential liver surgery. But the outcome is all going to depend on what gets found in there.
