The Undercover Vet: Swab, swab.....where art thou swab?

Let me introduce you to Fred (aka swabman).....he was an old vet who I had the pleasure of working with. He was an amiable chap, who was on the verge of retiring. He had managed his own practice previously but was offered a good deal to sell up. He decided to cash in but wasn't ready to quite give up being a vet. So he decided to go and work for another clinic before he retired - this is when we became colleagues.

There was this one occasion when Fred was doing a dental procedure on a Jack Russell terrier, which basically involved just cleaning and polishing the teeth. Fred liked to put a gauze swab (basically a piece of cotton cloth-like material) at the back of the throat during the dental, to prevent water going into the airways/windpipe.

During dentals, the descaling of the teeth, which involves the removal of plaque and calculus (not the mathematical type!), can get quite messy and the ultrasonic scaler (hand held vibrating machine - No...not the one found in shops with blacked out windows!) can get quite hot. The water runs through to the tip of the descaler and into the mouth. Water is used for both cooling the descaler and preventing the burning of teeth, as well as helping to wash away the broken down plaque.

Unfortunately, water can sometimes run into the airways (even though a tube is passed into the windpipe for breathing and administering the anaesthetic). If this happens, it can occasionally cause the animal to cough a little after the procedure.

So anyhow, Fred always liked to try and prevent this by using a swab at the back of the throat. Unfortunately on this occasion though, the dog was waking up during the procedure and ended up swallowing the swab. It had completely disappeared and was already way down into the stomach. At this point, Fred had to contact the owner and inform him. He offered the option of leaving it and hoping that it would pass out naturally or alternatively, using an endoscope (a long tube allowing you look at something at the other end) to try and retrieve it. The owner of the dog opted for the latter option.

Fred got the endoscopy gear out and passed it through the dog's mouth and into the stomach. He proceeded to look for the swab. I can tell you that this procedure sounds easy but it is a lot more fiddly than you think. Fred was looking for this swab for some time but then finally, like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, his luck turned and he saw it and the end portion of the stomach.

Finding it was just half the job - now he had to retrieve it by using a pair of long forceps. Being an older man, his hand-eye coordination wasn't the greatest and this again took some time leading to even more sweat and cursing. Eventually, he finally managed to lock onto the swab and pull it out. Fred at this point was quite mentally exhausted, from what should have been a quick and easy clean of the teeth. Understandably, Fred tried to avoid doing dentals for a bit after that - too much hard graft!.

It has been said that people who regularly play video games on consoles, like the playstation, improve their hand-eye coordination and subsequently, their endoscopy skills. So many years of playing video games has been part of my veterinary training - that's what I like to tell myself anyway!