Wild Medicine
First the goose had to be anesthetized. A clear plastic cone mask was secured over the bird’s pink beak just below its distinctive chestnut eye patches. But because the trachea was almost completely blocked, the anesthetic gas could not reach her abdominal air sac, one of several structures that comprise a bird’s breathing apparatus. Unlike mammals, such as humans, birds do not have diaphragms, and their lungs are inflexible. They move air through the air sacs like bellows to deliver oxygen to the lungs. The only alternative was to bypass the trachea through direct access to the abdominal air sac. That required inserting a tube through a skin incision. This accomplished two things: It restored the goose’s breathing pattern and gave the team the ability to anesthetize the patient. In less than a minute the goose lay comfortably quiet. Gamble gently inserted the endoscope two inches down the trachea where it stopped. A dead end. The monitor displayed the problem.

“The opening that remained was about the size of a pinpoint,” Lacasse says. The veterinarians decided to leave the breathing tube in the bird’s abdomen to stabilize her for the night. In the morning, surgery would be performed to open the trachea.

A bird’s trachea is made up of a series of rings resembling a corrugated tube. Physical trauma can crimp these rings, which are inelastic, and cause a buildup of scar tissue. A pathology report received later indicated that the goose had probably been grabbed around the neck by another goose. This seemed a likely explanation since Egyptian geese get feisty when guarding their territory.

During surgery the next morning, Gamble made an incision in the neck and cut two rings from the trachea after confirming the location on the endoscope monitor. Then the trachea was sutured inside and out. As a precaution, the abdominal breathing tube remained in place for a few days, until it was clear the surgery was a success and the bird was breathing normally. On another morning in late February, Gamble places the goose under anesthesia again. The endoscope displays a clear trachea with very little scarring.

“That’s spectacular,” Gamble says to keeper Diana Villafuerte, who strokes the bird’s back feathers. “There’s no closing down of the trachea, and this is three weeks later. That’s usually the window for signs of a problem. She’s got a real good chance.”

The Eygptian goose’s prospects might have been less promising a year or so earlier, before the zoo owned an endoscope. Without it, the same diagnosis probably would have been made and surgery performed, but with less expediency and accuracy. The medical team wouldn’t have been able to look deep enough into the trachea to see the cause of the blockage.

That’s just one example of how technology gives the medical staff new tools with which to enhance the quality of life of animals at Lincoln Park Zoo. “People are shocked by how sophisticated animal medicine is today,” Gamble says in her office, one floor above the zoo’s treatment room and laboratory. “They say, ‘Wow! This is the same type of stuff they do for humans.’ It just startles them. I’ve had medical doctors come to me and say, ‘I’d like to offer my skills to do X, Y and Z. I’m sure it’s never been done on animals.’ They don’t know that there’s an entire veterinary college of dentistry or for zoological medicine.”

Next: Refined instruments

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