A very unusual patient visited the Ryan Hospital on April 23. A six-inch, two-year-old female seahorse was brought to the Hospital by veterinarians from the National Aquarium in Baltimore. The seahorse had a pea-size growth on its pectoral fin, near the gills. “Last October we removed a mass by conventional surgery,” said Dr. Caryn Poll of the National Aquarium. “But the mass grew back and we are here to have it removed by laser surgery.”
Chick Weisse, V’98, lecturer in surgery, enjoys working with marine animals and has performed numerous surgeries on fish. The little seahorse was his first patient of the Hippocampus variety.
The animal was anesthetized in water; it took about five minutes for it to become unconscious. Then it was removed from the water and placed on the table, and Dr. Poll carefully syringed water over the gills while Dr. Weisse used the tiny laser probe to remove the tumor. He then used the laser to ablate the tumor bed in the hope of removing any remaining cancer cells that could regrow. “Seahorses have a bony layer within the skin, called osteoderm, so one can’t just cut away the tumor without leaving a large defect,” said Dr. Weisse. “The laser removed the layer of cancer cells while sealing the blood vessels, nerves, and lymphatics.”
The surgery lasted only minutes, and that same day, the Hippocampus reidi was safely back in her tank at the National Aquarium, swimming around. In lay language she is called a longsnout seahorse, and her natural home is the Western Atlantic.
Source:
www.vet.upenn.edu/.../59/seahorse_surgery.html