Arthritis - Surgery ??

[Egghead]

Hi everyone

My boxer is 2 1/2 years old and has, for most of his life, had problems with occasional stiff legs in the evening. I took him to see my vet who had a good look, and manipulated him, but found nothing wrong. He decided it was just general strain from runing about and playing with his 4-legged friends.

BUT 3 weeks ago he was walking on 3 legs and obviously in some pain. I returned to the vet who sent me to a specialist. It turns out he has quite bad arthritis in his right knee. He prescribed some medicine and said that if the problem continues he may operate to clean up his knee, even though that won't be a miracle cure.

I did a search on here and found a lot of good stuff which I have written down and will speak to my vet about. The problem with living in France is that holistic remedies are not so findable as they apparently are in the US - acupuncture for animals !!! Unheard of here I think !

My question is that from looking at all the threads on arthritis, no one mentioned surgery. Has anyone tried this on their dog who has arthritis ? With what results ? Any replies gratefully received.

 

[VTbxrFan]

My parents senior boxer recently had surgery on his knee to repair a ligament and work on arthritis...and my own boxer had the same thing at a young age. In these cases, there was another reason driving the surgery, but the surgeons also removed some of the damaged tissue while they were in there. It's my understanding that surgery cannot completely fix arthritis and that it will come back over time - unfortunately not the greatest news with a young dog - but you might at least get some improvement for a while. Are you using a joint supplement (like glucosamine or choindrotin)? If not, I would definitely suggest that...I've seen a lot of improvement in my boy from that.

 

[boxers4life2001]

I have never heard of a vet opening up a joint JUST to remove arthritis. If they are in the joint to repair somthing else (acl, luxating patella, etc...)some vet's will/can remove the build up of arthritis. Over time it will come back but you may be able to slow it down with joint supplements like VTbxFan suggested.

I know things are down differently around the World so i'm not sure what is considered standard procedure in France for this problem but I can tell you that I have never heard of a vet doing that here just for arthritis. Did the vet mention anything about a ruptured cruciate or torn meniscus? Did he say the ONLY problem was arthritis?

~Carrie~

 

[dukie's mom]

Not sure exactly how dog knee anatomy compares to humans..but I have severe arthritis in my knee, which involves worn torn cartilidge and bone spurs. At some point I will probably benefit from some arthroscopic surgery to cleas up the loose stuff so the joint functiones smoother..my knee catches on some of the loose stuff all the time.
The downside is once you open up a joint and operate on it it can potentially lead to further problems, so you really have to weigh the benefits vs the gains.

If you are talking about ruptured tendons, that is something else. Our neighbors rottie had had the surgery on both knees. the second one was damaged playing with a younger more energetic dog.

 

[Egghead]

Carrie, the only problem is arthritis apparently but as Dukie's mum says, Conker may benefit from surgery to clean up bits of bone that may be floating around in there. I was just a bit worried because no one on the arthritis threads I looked at mentioned surgery.
Anyway, apparently glucosamine ( or something like that ) seems to be the way to go, I'm definitely looking into that.
Thanks to those who answered.

 

[VTbxrFan]

In thinking about this more, I can't help wondering if there is some other injury or joint problem that contributed. I'm certainly not an expert, but he seems awfully young to have arthritis without any underlying cause. Have you considered getting a second opinion from another vet or an orthopedic specialist?

I mention this because when I adopted my boy at 2 years old, he had a very, very slight limp...hardly noticeable. And in fact I didn't notice it at all when I first met him - I just started picking up on it a few weeks after I got him. In his case, it was arthritis from luxating patella. So we made plans to operate, but wanted to postpone it for a month or so to let him adjust to his new home before the trauma of surgery. Unfortunately during that period, he ended up rupturing a ligament - largely a result of instability in the knee from the luxating patella. So we went ahead with surgery immediately. He's recovered well, but it's still frustrating to know that if the luxating patella had been diagnosed when he first started limping (before I got him), it could have been fixed before the ligament ruptured and it would have improved his odds for a future without knee problems.

That's just my 2 cents - something to think about. Luxating patella is not common in boxers - it's more common in small dogs - and in my case, the symptoms were easy to miss. It was only diagnosed by sedating him so the vet could properly manipulate his knee.