Modern veterinarians are being trained in more and more specialized fields as the science of animal medicine grows. But there is still a large percentage who know emergency dental repair along with other more common veterinary routines. Anything with teeth is in danger of loosing a tooth or breaking a jaw. It’s times like these when they need emergency dental surgery.
Those Are Big Teeth
In November of 2007, Mohan and Maneka had suffered an accident and each broke a tooth , requiring emergency dental repair. There was only one complication – both Mohan and Maneka were Bengal tigers. Their pain had left them in a very cranky mood. Because there weren’t any Indian veterinarians skilled in emergency dental repair, a veterinarian was flown in from England by an animal charity, International Animal Rescue (based in England).
The operation was a success and the tigers were not only put out of their misery, but lived to tell the tale. It is not entirely sure how their teeth became broken. They were found in miserable conditions in a traveling circus, so it is thought that they broke the teeth chewing on the bars of their cage out of boredom. There aren’t many people willing to take up tiger emergency dental repair for a living.
Out Like A Light
It’s not just emergency dental repair that has advanced in veterinary medicine, but animal anesthesia, too. It is impossible to extract a tooth from a conscious tiger – not if you want to survive the procedure. Anesthesia used to be too tricky of a substance to risk on a rare creature and was only reserved for emergency surgical procedures. Now we know better how much anesthesia most species can safely withstand.
Unlike other surgical procedures, an anesthetic mask can’t be placed onto the tigers during emergency dental repair. With other surgeries, a trained veterinary anesthesiologist could monitor the amount of gas the tiger was getting and make sure the tiger was unconscious. But with a dental procedure, you need unrestricted access to the mouth. The anesthesia needs to be given as an injection.
Then, you pray that there was enough in the dose to keep the tiger unconscious throughout the emergency dental repair work. You can’t pussyfoot about (pardon the pun). A veterinary dentist has to quickly identify the bad tooth, prop the mouth open, pull the bad tooth and put in a filling. And tigers don’t even carry insurance.
