Bladder stones in dogs can irritate the urinary tract mucosa and cause damage to the urinary tract mucosa, so the sick dog will suffer from hematuria, painful urination, frequent urination and other phenomena. If left untreated, stones can completely block the urinary tract over time. So how can you tell if your dog has bladder stones? What are the symptoms of bladder stones in dogs, and how to treat them?

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How to judge bladder stones in dogs

Bladder stones in dogs can irritate the urinary tract mucosa and cause damage to the urinary tract mucosa, so the sick dog will suffer from hematuria, painful urination, frequent urination and other phenomena. If left untreated, stones can completely block the urinary tract over time. So how can you tell if your dog has bladder stones?

It can be diagnosed with urine tests and X-rays, and attention should be paid to identifying uroliths, urinary tract tumors, polyps, blood clots and genitourinary abnormalities caused by urinary tract infection. Symptoms related to stones are not specific to uroliths. There are various methods to estimate urolith composition, such as visual inspection, crystalluria, radiological imaging, and quantitative analysis of stones, which provide authoritative diagnostic information.

After you are diagnosed with bladder stones in your pet, most of the stones in the bladder are now very large or numerous! At this time, the best time for conservative treatment is lost. For severe urethral obstruction, surgery is often performed on the same day to remove the stones.

Clinical symptoms of bladder stones in dogs

When dog bladder stones form, the stones in the dog's bladder will move to the ureter, causing ureteral obstruction, or a small amount of stones may be excreted in the urine. Due to the stimulation of stones, it is easy to cause damage to the mucous membrane of the dog's urinary tract, causing inflammation, bleeding and other symptoms.

Urethral stones in male dogs often occur at the same time. The main symptoms are difficulty in urinating, frequent urination, and blood in the urine. The affected dog urinates with difficulty and groans. In the early stage, it can discharge a small amount of urine, which is dripping. Later, it cannot be discharged at all. At the foreskin Fine sand-like stones can be felt. As the disease progresses, the affected dog develops abdominal distension, and the bladder can be felt to be full and enlarged by touching the abdomen. Due to urine poisoning, dogs show symptoms such as polydipsia and vomiting. Death will eventually occur due to complications from bladder rupture. Most female dogs only have bladder stones, which are manifested by frequent urination in the early stage, turbid urine with sticky or fibrinous floc, or blood streaks in the discharged urine, and severe hematuria. Some patients experience pain when urinating, with low urine output and high frequency. Some people can discharge small particles or fine sand-like stones when urinating. If the stones are large and numerous, you can feel a hard and full bladder with slight activity by touching the upper part of the abdominal cavity and in front of the hip tubercle with both hands while standing in Baoding.

Treatment principles for dog bladder stones

DogIf you don’t pay attention to observation, bladder stones will be difficult to detect in the early stage. Therefore, it is very important to pay more attention to your dog every day. If your dog has reached the stage of needing surgery, then as an owner, you must pay attention to some pre- and post-operative precautions.

When the male dog's urethra cannot be connected, the urethra should be cut to drain the urine. The urethral obstruction can be felt based on the probing of the urinary catheter and external palpation with the hands. After determining the location of the obstruction, shave and disinfect the skin on the ventral side of the foreskin. Hold the penis bone with your left hand and lift the foreskin and penis to stretch the skin. Make a 2-4 cm incision on the midline between the back of the penis and the penis, incise the skin, separate the subcutaneous tissue to expose the constrictor muscles of the penis and move them to the side, incise the corpus cavernosum of the urethra, and use a urethral catheter to indicate the location of urethral stones. Make a 1-2 cm longitudinal incision in the urethra at the site of the stone, and use a blunt curette to carefully remove the stone from the incision. The urinary catheter is then advanced forward until it enters the bladder. At this time, the urine in the bladder is drained out as much as possible to facilitate cystotomy. After ensuring that the urethra is clear, the incision is flushed and the urethra is sutured with catgut. Skin nodules are sutured with silk thread.

A skin incision of 6 to 8 cm is made on the side of the foreskin, one finger wide and parallel to the penis. After the skin is incised, the edge of the foreskin of the incision is pulled sideways to expose the linea alba of the abdominal wall. The abdominal wall is incised at the linea alba. At this time, care should be taken to avoid damaging the abdominal wall blood vessels and bladder. After exposing the bladder, hold the base of the bladder with one or two fingers and carefully turn the bladder outside the wound so that the dorsal side of the bladder faces upward. Then isolate the bladder with gauze and explore with fingers to check for cystitis and bladder wall thickening. An incision is made from the dorsal part of the bladder where there are few blood vessels, along the direction of the smooth muscle. By inserting your fingers into the incision for exploration, you can generally detect the presence of stones of different sizes in the bladder neck. You can use a small spoon and intravesical flushing to remove as much stone residue as possible. If small stones cannot be completely removed, backwashing can be used to remove stones. The method is: insert the urethral catheter from the urethral opening into the urethra through the penile bone, and then inject warm saline with ampicillin and ampicillin into the urethra multiple times until the stone is completely backwashed into the bladder and passed through the bladder incision. until discharged. After the stones in the bladder are removed and cleaned, the bladder incision is closed with double-layer continuous inversion sutures. In order to prevent the sutures from being exposed in the bladder and causing stones to form, Cushing's suture is used in the first layer, and the seromuscular layer of the bladder wall is sutured with horizontal mattress inversion; Rembert suture is used in the second layer, and the seromuscular layer of the bladder wall is sutured. The muscle layer was sutured continuously in a vertical mattress manner, and absorbable catgut was used as the suture. After the bladder is returned to the abdominal cavity, the abdominal cavity is closed routinely. Male dogs should have a urinary catheter for 5 to 7 days.