I cut the end a little shorter to enlarge that hole, cut the existing side-hole larger, and add another hole to the opposite side. It’s got a little screw on cap, a little hole in the end, a little hole in the side, and two little spurs to keep it from falling out. Here’s the basic tube, designed to be put up into a cow’s udder to allow nasties to drain when she has mastitis (breast infections). It’s still pretty messy for a few days, but so much cheaper and easier on the dog, the owner, and the surgeon. You have to keep them on antibiotics during this period, as bacteria can enter the pocket through the tube that the fluid is draining from, and it’s a great place for them to grow. This allows the fluid to escape so that the ear can "stick back together". Then a little plastic drainage tube is sutured in place and left for a couple of weeks. Using a large-bore hypodermic needle, a small (1/8 inch) incision is made in the pocket and the fluid drained out. What a horrendous, messy piece of surgery that was, not to mention the mess during the healing process.Ī huge advance was the development of a much less drastic technique that works ninety percent of the time and frequently doesn’t even require a tranquilizer. Then the ear pinna was sewn to a piece of some rigid material so that it wouldn’t wrinkle up and "cauliflower" as it healed.
#Dog aural hematoma skin#
In the old days (jeez, I was a kid in "the old days"), this involved cutting a sliver of skin out of the underside of the ear so that it wouldn’t heal up too fast. You needed to keep the pocket draining until the vessels inside healed up. Plus,the pet stays really uncomfortable for a long time.ĭraining the swelling by simply puncturing it doesn’t work very well. The ear pinna gets badly scarred and deformed and "wadded up" in the healing process, much like the cauliflower ear of the boxer whose head has been pummeled hard enough to break ears, noses, and cheekbones. If you don’t drain these bloody swellings, it takes months for the body to stop the leak and absorb all the fluid. Then the pinna would receive a major surgery. Treatment would obviously need to include treatment of the ear canal infection that started the process. This causes him to shake his head and scratch his ears until he finally breaks a blood vessel in the pinna, which then begins the inflation process. When I was in veterinary school in the seventies, the conventional wisdom was that the dog (or cat) has an ear infection. They are pretty uncomfortable, if not downright painful. This swelling means that the area is under a lot of pressure, and that means pain.Īffected individuals are usually holding their head sideways, and they may or may not be shaking their head. The ear can look like it has a slight bulge, or it can look as though it has been inflated to the point of bursting. When a blood vessel in the pinna breaks, it oozes fluid between the layers, separating the skin on the underside of the pinna from the cartilage. The pinna is a 3-layer sandwich of skin, cartilage and skin. The pinna is the floppy, outside part of the ear (as opposed to the ear canal, the tube going down and in to the ear-drum). Aural means ear and hematoma means bloody swelling. An aural hematoma is one of the most painful- looking conditions I know of.
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