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i am the owner of a 3 year old bullmastiff female who had a seven pound hemangioma removed march 17, 2005, from her right side rib and abdomen. they have tried numerous attempts at closing this 38 inch hole in her skin unsuccessfully, first they tried slowly drawing the skin together, but the perimeter sutures kept ripping out, then the tried 3 different "z" skin flaps. she then aquire pseudomonous, and a flesh eating bacteria. last week they attempted skin grafts, they took 12 skin sites from her left side, cut each of those down into four donors measuring 1/2 cm by approx. 2", and sewed them about 1/2" from each other. when she aquired the flesh eating bacteria, she was put on an antibiotic that was sensitive to,and dressing her wound with silver sulphadiazine, using telpha pads and vet wrap to keep those in place. yesterday, at her dressing change appointment, the skin grafts, now a week old, do not look healthy. is there any web site or additional information i can read or copy for her vet to read up on. i have pictures of her surgery and progression of treatment i can attempt to send if needed. any help would be so greatly appreciated. please email me at Customer (name blocked for privacy)@jmhny.org thank you so much

Customer (name blocked for privacy)

I am not a veterinarian but like you am someone who seeks to research all I can about any condition my dogs come up with.
I think dogs normally do a simply incredible job of healing from injury. The times I have seen a dog not do well healing have been in situations where the dog had an undetected whipworm infection. Apparently the worms pulled just enough nutrition from the body to make healing impossible. I've seen it make a big difference in healing (though this was with broken legs that just would not heal) to get rid of any possible parasites using panacur.
Also you listed all the medical things you were doing to help the dog which matches up with what you will find on internet research such as here
http://www.vetsurgerycentral.com/free_flap.htm
but you did not mention any nutritional supplements or efforts being made to make sure that the dog's body has all the building blocks needed to help with healing. Humans often find adding vitamin e or multivitamins to the diet help with healing for example.
This site talks about the effects of nutritional IV supplementation on human burn victim's skin grafting and recovery. http://www.medbc.com/annals/review/vol_15/num_3/text/vol15n3p125.asp The findings conclusion indicates that IV nutrition support seems to aid in the recovery and the success of the skin grafts improving immunity and patient healing capability.
If you are not already doing nutritional support than that might be worth looking into as a possible help in your dog's recovery.
I wish you all the best in your efforts!

Edited by NHolmes on May 5 2005 at 11:40 AM

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