BSAVA Liverpool Student Conference 2018

This weekend I travelled up to the Uni of Liverpool Leahurst Campus with two friends to attend the BSAVA Liverpool Student Conference 2019. It is the second year the conference has ran and as we have a break before our next block, we decided to go and it was great value at £60 for the two days plus a dinner on Saturday night.
We stayed with vet students I've spoken to online for a couple of years but never actually met, so was great to meet them too!

Saturday morning kicked off with a couple of lectures and then an Endoscopy workshop. I've done a bit before at the Endoscopy Weekend and scoping birds with rigid endoscopes but it was great to practice.
We had to retrieve foreign bodies from a 'stomach' and as they say, teamwork makes the dream work and we got the best time!

Next up we had a lecture on fluids with Jacqui Seymour from VetsNow which I wasn't particularly looking forward to but turned out to be really useful! I think in practice we often put animals on fluids without thinking too much about what, how much and why so it was really interesting to think about it and practice evidence based medicine!

The second practical session I went to was Rabbit Neutering with Frances Harcourt-Brown, an RCVS Specialist in Rabbit Medicine and Surgery, and her husband who both have a wicked sense of humour!
Frances spoke about surgical techniques and spaying, particularly about where to place the cervical ligatures and her evidence base for it ...which is different to what I've seen in practice.


Saturday night we had a formal dinner which meant several bottles of wine and we don't remember much but we all had a good time and sore heads the next morning!


I think my favourite session was the Communication Skills workshop with Penny Barker from VDS Training. I often see posts about VDS and know vaguely what they do but never really paid attention to them, Penny was really engaging and interactive especially considering it was last thing on Sunday afternoon.

She spoke about DISC profiling and we worked out which profile(s) we best fitted into and how we react to conflict.

I definitely think I'm a High I, while apparently most of the veterinary profession are C and S.
I sat there thinking about various friends and colleagues and which profiles they fit into and then related it to clients and how to interact with them.

Overall we had a great weekend so thank you to all involved organising the weekend, the speakers and Becca for hosting us!

Veterinary Endoscopy Weekend

This weekend we were lucky enough to be visited by this years BSAVA President Philip Lhermette come out to Kosice to speak about minimally invasive (keyhole) surgery and endoscopy.

Philip has practiced endoscopy since 1995 so perfected lots of techniques for diagnostics and surgery and lectures at Nottingham Vet School as well as all over the world!

Burtons Veterinary Equipment drove over from the UK with the latest fixed and rigid endoscopes for us to try out with some awesome gastrointestinal models which have pathology we had to find and foreign bodies to remove.


There was also a station with rigid endoscopes for laparoscopy training with different tasks to complete like stacking sugar cubes, peeling oranges, removing stones from a kidney (red pepper) and balloons filled with water to simulate hydropericardium.

Céline the wonder pup came along for the practical sessions and loved laparoscopy...

The lectures were great and loads of us are now itching to find practices who do laparoscopic surgeries to do EMS at and learn more about the procedures. I'm sure that during my career we'll see more and more laparoscopic surgery with the medical advantages (less hemorrhage and pain, faster recovery) and clients requesting it.
I've said it time and time again but the technology available to vets for surgery is amazing - I loved the EndoGrab for fixing ovaries to the abdominal wall before zapping off the ovarian ligament, artery and vein with a LigaSure tissue and vessel sealer.

Many thanks to Philip Lhermette and Burton's for giving up your weekends and coming out to speak to us - a great time was had by all!

Equine Endoscopy - Lower Respiratory Tract

This semester we started Diseases of Horses which we will continue next year, ending in a State Exam.

This morning we had a lecture on Lower Respiratory Tract diseases then went into the stables to auscultate the cardiovascular systems of various horses, both school and patients, to listen for arrthymias and other pathologies.

We then went into surgery to perform an endoscopy on the lower respiratory tract.
We sedated the horse with xylazine, applied local anaesthetic get to numb the nose and reduce irritation for the horse and passed a flexible fibreoptic endoscope up her nasal passage. It takes three people to do the procedure; one to hold the hose, another to hold the scope at the nostril and another to control the endoscope.
 
We were able to view the nasal passages and larynx down the trachea to the carina (which is the bifurcation into the bronchi). The carina should be sharp but in this case it was blunt or the angle was thickened due to mucosal oedema and inflammation which indicated a chronic lower airway disease. We entered the bronchi but it induced heavy coughing which made it difficult to visualise.
Afterwards we examined the guttural pouches to look for mycosis or mucopurulent discharge, which in this patient were clear - if they weren't we can flush them and do culture and sensitivity testing.

In the guttural pouches we were able to visualise the cranial nerves VII to XII, salivary glands and carotid arteries which it quite scary considering a mistake with the scope could cause severe bleeding or facial paralysis!