Vets Bills

£2.3k for a Mast Cell Tumour in 2020, including FNA, full body CT to check for mets and that being sent to specialists for interpretation, fairly major op for removal and all follow ups.

We paid £99 and insurance paid the rest, that was 5 years ago and thankfully the old lady is still going strong at almost 13 with no reoccurrence 🤞🏻😊
 
For a single operation for one of mine.
8700AUD. Bilateral cataract removal and lens replacement.
Insurance paid 80 percent.
Worth every cent to me as I would have ended up euthanising my girl if we hasn't done the surgery as she wasn't coping with being blind well. Within a day of the surgery- once she realised she could see again, I had my happy girl back.
Only a handful of specialist vets can do that surgery in Australia.
She had a lot of other medical bills around that time, and will continue to do so for life but that one's the largest single one.

Largest bill I've heard of in small animal was over 70k for a cat. multiple days on a ventilator and weeks at the specialist hospital for tick paralysis. Insurance won't pay more then 1500 for that one though- as it's considered a preventable condition. That particular cat got media attention and was as paid for by a gofundme and crypo currency in the end.

Know of a few Frenchies who hit the 40k mark as well. Between a spinal issue and breathing issues most requiring placement of a tracheostomy things can escalate quickly. All at the specialists. Advanced imaging, ICU and a specialist level surgery will be expensive. Spend extended periods of time in ICU with one on one nursing care, oxygen tanks, multiple cri's etc....and your going to hit high level costs.
If you want human level medical career for an animal then it gets very expensive.

Most people don't opt to go that far though. Most expensive bill I've seen in house in gp, was 7k for advanced orthopaedics on a giant dog.

But Vet costs are definately escalating. We can do so much more now then used to be possible but it absolutely comes with higher costs.
I recommend and discuss Insurance a lot.
 
1 x approx £7k and then 1 x £6k . I paid 10% of each and insurance paid the rest . No messing around all very straightforward
 
FabioandFreddy said:
Hi - out of interest, can i ask if that was with an independent vet? We are looking at the same op for our Springer but our vets are quoting nearer £4k.
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Bilateral TPLO was £6K going back over 10 years for our springer. We went with the orthopaedic specialist, there was no way our usual vet could have offered that operation. Independent surgery as I recall. I mentioned this in another thread, it’s common for the other one to go, unfortunately. Our insurance said the 2nd one going was a ‘pre-existing condition’ so didn’t pay out for the second.
 
FabioandFreddy said:
Hi - out of interest, can i ask if that was with an independent vet? We are looking at the same op for our Springer but our vets are quoting nearer £4k.
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So it was diagnosed by our regular independent vet - he’s the head of his own practice, and a general surgeon, but had never performed a TPLO.

He offered to do the surgery himself, or to refer us to an orthopaedic specialist at another clinic, which is what we did. So that 2.3k was for a specialist surgeon.

This was in early 2021, however we’re also in Northern Ireland which may skew pricing also. This was also only for 1 leg - thankfully he never needed the 2nd leg operated.
 
Last year I paid £4k for a TPLO for a 48kg dog at the RVC - they do a fixed price for quite a few common ops based on dog weight. That included pre op xrays, the op, meds and hospitalisation. Post op xrays were extra, about £600 IIRC and despite the other leg having been done 3 years previously, Napo covered the cost as it was more than 2 years after the first op despite a change of insurers. https://www.rvc.ac.uk/small-animal-...st-led-veterinary-orthopaedic-referral-prices

Depending on where you are, it can be worth 'shopping around' especially if you can head slightly north, a lot of the specialist vets offer fixed prices, I know I looked at a specialist centre in liverpool that was literally half the price of my local specialists and/or Fitzpatricks...

 
Just talking dogs, we have bottomed out £5000 cover for two separate dogs, one some years ago with spinal pain that needed an MRI, spinal tap, and everything else they could think of. One this Feb that had to have 2 eye ops (second was an eye removal after first op failed) on a Saturday and then a Sunday, at a referral hosp.
I'm not even going to mention vet bills for horses...(one currently in horsepital for bone scan/xrays... 🫣 )
 
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