“Testing a low cost ventilator using a pig model”
By Doctor Olivia Aketch
Studying swine medicine as an undergraduate exposed me to a healthy pig, how to tell a sick pig and how to manage swine conditions.
As a field veterinarian, veterinary herd health management and planning practices reduce greatly the prevalence of disease in pigs, improve weight gain and ultimately confer profit to my farmers. It makes me smile because I do not have to treat pigs every time I get to a pig farmer.
As I advance my knowledge in veterinary medicine with emphasis in critical care medicine, see who blesses my journey, “Mr. Pig”
As a Master of Veterirnary Medicine student, my focus is on evaluation of performance of a low cost ventilator for use in human intensive care management. It is then that I discover the closest relation to a human respiratory system is a swine respiratory system…. wow!
Did you know pigs have some anatomical and physiological similarities to humans, especially the delivery systems? Yes there are. So I set out to do the unimaginable, put a pig under general anesthesia.
Putting a pig under general anethesia is something I did not do during my veterinary medicine undergraduate studies, neither did I hope to do in life but here we are.
An experience with Oink sounds in a pig
First fun, putting a pig to sleep using most of the pre-medicants and anesthetics dosages that have not been standardized making it hard to get a pig sleeping even for 5 minutes!!!
So we set out to standardize anesthetic protocols for pig models, measure the physiological parameters, blood gases and non invasive blood pressure. With the oink sounds of swine these parameters are a heck measuring. As you are busy counting the rates per second, the pig oinks and guess what, you do it again and again and again……………
Talk of accesing the blood vessels, while we are very conversant with the cephalic vein for pets, that of pig require an extra skill and a good belief, but my senior did it. What is more enthusiastic for me is using the ear vein to which I gladly inserted the 22G cannula and tapped the ear.
Once we were sure the pig is deep on anesthesia, we insert the endotracheal tube and have to be sure we are there. Dear vets only Prof James Okwee Acai was perfect on first insertion. So then we have our pig ready, completely unable to breath by himself so the ventilator does the work while he lays down and being monitored.
So far it is been an exciting discovery with a good touch of science, all for enhancement of human critical health care systems. Indeed veterinary medicine is only a tip of the iceberg.
Allow me share with you the next piece at next year’s World Veterinary Day celebrations.
HAPPY WORLD VETERINARY DAY DEAR VETERINARIANS!
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Dr . Olivia Aketch
BVM, MSC VETERINARY MEDICINE (food animal health and production), Makerere University
Veterinary Officer, Mukono District
