![]() X-rays’ major limitation is their inability to distinguish more than four main densities in the normal body. The person is gowned up with a lead apron.” Small dogs - we’ll have someone actually hold them. “And we have ‘bookends’ - padded heavy weighted metal devices that we can use to hold a dog in position. “We use positioning devices like sandbags that we wrap around a dog’s legs,” Dr. ![]() One advantage of an x-ray is that the dog can typically be fully awake for the procedure. Sutherland-Smith says, “you can see the bruising of a lung or a torn diaphragm” - a sheet of muscle that is supposed to keep the chest and the abdomen separate. And they can be very useful in picking up internal damage after a trauma such as a dog’s getting hit by a car. ![]() X-rays are also good for helping to diagnose bone disease such as a fracture or joint problem that might be causing lameness. Occasionally something like struggling to urinate may be a reason to x-ray inside the abdominal cavity, too.” Most of the gastrointestinal organs are housed in the abdomen. An abdominal x-ray might be triggered by unexplained vomiting or diarrhea. “Coughing, struggling to breathe, or breathing too fast might be what leads to a thoracic x-ray. “In the thorax we’re looking for lung and heart disease, predominantly,” says Tufts board certified veterinary radiologist James Sutherland-Smith, BVSc, DACVR. X-rays are used in dogs most often for images of the thoracic (chest) cavity and the abdominal cavity. Exceptions include anxious or boisterous dogs or those in pain.Ĭost: (roughly) $50 to 100 per image. Sedation necessary? Not usually (which helps keep down cost). An organ such as the spleen will come across gray. Conversely, gas will look black, as it absorbs no x-rays. Bone will look whiter than the rest of the image because it absorbs more x-rays. How it works: Different tissues absorb x-rays (electromagnetic radiation) in differing amounts. Picks up: bone gas soft tissue and fluid fat metal. X-Rays for Dogsīest for seeing: major abnormalities and dramatic changes in the size, shape, or content of organs. But few know exactly what each type of image captures, and when each is called for. Would the young dog be best served by a set of x-rays, which would cost in the neighborhood of $100 to $200, or would he need, say, an ultrasound, which would perhaps triple or quadruple the cost?Įverybody has heard of x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans, and other types of medical imaging - most of us have had at least one of them ourselves at one point or another. To find out quickly what was wrong - maybe Rocky had an intestinal blockage that needed to be repaired immediately so he wouldn’t die - the emergency veterinarian had to decide what kind of picture to get of his gastrointestinal tract, where the problem was suspected. The 2-year-old Brittany spaniel was coping with extreme discomfort and dehydration and had now started vomiting. Rocky was rushed to Tufts’s small animal hospital in the middle of the night. ![]()
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