Jul 17, 2008 8:23 pm US/Mountain
Prosthetic Foot Implanted In Injured Dog At CSU
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) ―
A crippled dog rescued in Kuwait a year ago has successfully started walking with a prosthetic foot.
Sally, a Saluki, lost her foot and part of her left hind leg. An animal rescue group brought brought her to the Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital for surgery and now Sally is finally able to walk on all four legs.
Before the customized prosthetic foot was implanted in her bone, Sally needed several other surgeries to prepare her leg for the implant.
Dr. Erick Egger says Sally has helped him in his effort to perfect the use of prosthetic implants in dogs. The implant is unlike traditional animal prosthetics that have straps that animals wind up chewing on and often cause skin irtritation. Egger says that with the implant, Sally can also better feel what she is walking on.
"Apparently the bone becomes sensitive, and the bone will develop a sense of footing… what the surface feels like where their foot is," Egger said.
Slobodan Tepic, the Swiss developer of the implant, says perfecting implanted prosthetics on animals like Sally could eventually help human amputees.
"There is very little of this being done on humans, of direct anchor to the bone. It is all experimental," he said.
The next step for Sally and her doctors is to perfect the length of the leg and the foot so that one day it will work just as well as the leg she lost.
Egger says he hopes to perfect the series of surgeries required for a prosthetic implant so that everything heals well and the prosthetic doesn't become loose, which has been a problem with implants inserted into bone..
The long-term hope is to make it so that the muscles in the leg are able to control what the prosthetic does so it will act as a real limb.
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