Luxating patella sx

[Southpaw]

Anybody had patellar surgery on their dogs?

We've known Lucy's whole life that she has luxating patellas. At first they were both like a grade 1 or 2, but as of last year her left rear is a grade 4 (right is still a 1-2). She was limping a bit at that time which is why I had them rechecked, surgery was mentioned but after a few days on Novox she was doing fine and has been fine since.

Now she's doing bad on it again and has periods where she's 3-legged and won't even put it down. So now we're seriously considering the surgery.

I guess my hang up is, how much help can I expect... she's 9 years old. I dont know if I go ahead with surgery or just manage with pain meds again?

I don't have much experience with this problem...

 

[katielou]

I am in the same position with Zooey only she's 13 now but still crazy active.

I've been managing with swimming and pain meds. Keeping her active is the only thing that's helping weirdly.

 

[SpringerLover]

We see a lot of patella problems at work (sx and non-sx). One of the biggest compounding problems is cruciate issues. They seem to go hang in hand a lot.

 

[Laurelin]

From talking to my vet about Mia's patellas I am planning on trying meds before surgery. I suspect Mia will have arthritis pretty badly when she's older because there's already some signs (of course Mia has other more pressing issues on top of that with her trachea). My vet is very minimalistic when it comes to patella surgery because he said he's seen it go both ways as far as helping or not. He only recommended it in cases where the patient was in a lot of pain all the time.

Especially with an older dog, I'd be doing the meds route first. If that didn't give her a quality of life I liked then I'd consider surgery. Nikki had some major ankle/wrist problems and rimadyl was our savior. It greatly improved her quality of life.

 

[Kat09Tails]

I've seen several dogs absolutely crippled by the surgery vs being fairly mobile pre surgery so I can tell you that I would be seeking a specialist's opinion and skills more so than letting a GP vet do this kind of work.