Abstract
Rehabilitation is drawing more and more attention as a therapeutic practice, also in veterinary surgery. In this study, we performed post-operative rehabilitation on a dog which had gone through tibial-plateau-leveling osteotomy(TPLO), and whose treatment had been complicated by cranial cruciate ligament rupture and cauda equina syndrome. We then examined the usefulness of rehabilitation. We performed icing, passive range-of- motion(PROM)exercise, massotherapy, hyperthermia and hydropathy on the dog from the postoperative early stage. The results revealed that the range of joint motion and the muscle mass decreased less than in the control dogs. Time to recovery of walking, analyzed with the force plate, was two months, which was shorter than in the control dogs, which was three months. Collectively, we suggest that the rehabilitation at the early stage is effective in accelerating postoperative recovery. We hope that rehabilitation will become more common in veterinary medicine also in Japan, and it will be helpful for patient animals to become free of paralysis and/or pain, and to reduce the suffering of owners.
