Calgary canine becomes first in Alberta to undergo rare kidney procedure

Calgary is now one of Canada’s only cities where veterinarians are able to perform a life-saving procedure on dogs who face a rare kidney condition.

Doctors at Calgary’s Western Veterinary Specialist Centre performed their first sclerotherapy, a minimally invasive procedure, on nine-year-old Lucy this past July.

Coverage of canine surgeries on Globalnews.ca:

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The pooch was suffering from a kidney disorder called idiopathic renal hematuria, in which blood streams from the organ to the bladder.

“It literally looked like straight blood, there was almost no sign of urine in there,” Dr. Serge Chalhoub, an internal medicine specialist, said about Lucy’s condition.

“The concern is that they can hemorrhage so much, bleed so much, that they will need transfusions and I’ve seen a case where we just couldn’t keep up with the transfusions.”

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Chalhoub, who is also a member of the University of Calgary faculty of Veterinary Medicine, said the kidney condition is rare. One option is to remove the organ, however there’s a chance the remaining kidney will also develop the disorder.

Specialists opted to pursue a minimally invasive procedure instead, which had never been performed in Alberta before, according to Chalhoub.

“We use iodine and silver nitrate and we use this minimally invasive technique to actually instill them into the kidney,” Lauren Adelman, an internal medicine specialist who took part in the procedure, said in a Friday interview.

This process essentially creates a patch to stop the bleeding, according to Adelman. She recently moved back to Calgary after learning how to perform the procedure in the United States.

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“There’s probably, I would say, under 20 or 30 doctors in North America that can do these procedures,” Chalhoub said.

“Once people realize we’re here, we’re diagnosing this condition and we have a really interesting way of treating it, they start sending them our way,” Adelman added.

Lucy was Calgary’s first patient of this kind and she is now healthy and happy. Her owner, Mindy Ages, said she’s “eternally grateful” for the veterinarians who helped save her dog’s life.

“She’s like our fur kid, that’s the best way I can describe her,” Ages said about her canine companion.

“We couldn’t imagine life without her.”