Surgical site infection

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Hilldale

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Hi. Can anyone give me some advice. My 7yr old whippet had leg surgery at leahurst animal hospital. She was discharged with no antibiotics and infection discovered next day. I ve had 18months of constant visits to my local vet, antibiotics etc.. I ve contacted vcms but it's ended up an empasse. I owe £ 2.500 and struggling to pay. Insurance wouldn't cover it all.
 
Infections are part of a risk of surgery - what exactly is the concern you have? It's unfortunate that your insurance wont cover it but thats a choice you will have made when taking out the insurance as to the level of cover you opted for. What about a 0% credit card so you can pay it off? Hope the dog is now doing better.
 
SusieT said:
Infections are part of a risk of surgery - what exactly is the concern you have? It's unfortunate that your insurance wont cover it but thats a choice you will have made when taking out the insurance as to the level of cover you opted for. What about a 0% credit card so you can pay it off? Hope the dog is now doing better.
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I don't condone overuse of antibiotics but would this be a situation when they would normally be used? OP what was your own vet's opinion?
 
Post operative Infection is a risk with all surgery I'm afraid. It isnt the vets fault your dogs system did not respond as expected. There's no guarantee every animals system will respond in the same way unfortunately. Did they culture and grow the exact strains involved in order to treat the infection? Or was implant removal etc required? That's a very long timeframe.
Use of broad spectrum antibiotics for all surgery in post op is no longer recommended in order to avoid antibiotic resistance in the longer scheme of things so sending home without further antibiotic would be considered standard tertiary centre treatment at this point. Even in g.p we use them as little as possible now for sterile surgical procedures and only send home oral meds when required, based on the rechecks, rather then giving them to all dogs undergoing surgery as standard.
Chances are certain antibiotics were given iv on the during the surgery itself if the surgeon felt they were required (certain procedures and timeframes get burst amounts of iv antibiotics on the day but again nothing to go home on for the majority)

The outstanding bill is yours unfortunately, especially if it's you own vets who didn't even preform the procedure who are being left unpaid for services provided.
Many vet practices will discount heavily on post operative complication management on their own surgery but they are not obliged to..It's done as its good for client relations in the long term.

I think the nhs gives people an interesting view in medical procedures. Post op complications in humans are also out of pocket of the patient anywhere you need to pay for medical care.
 
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