Bones

Hyena + stuck bone = 4.5 hour anaesthetic procedure to remove said bone and subsequently remove broken tooth that bone was stuck on!

This is Kigana one of our gorgeous spotted hyenas. He was my one and only patient for whole day. My first big carnivore anaesthetic here (and hyena!) and very glad to get one under my belt, so to speak. Much of a the monitoring equipment we use is very similar to that used in human medicine. The coloured cords are ECG leads, the grey cord measures blood oxygen levels and the purple sleeve on his leg is a blood pressure cuff.

Apart from his initial reluctance to go to sleep resulting in a volatile cocktail of drugs that would have made Amy Winehouse proud, his actual procedure went well and he had recovered successfully by late afternoon :)