TENSION BAND HERNIORRHAPHY IN CANINE PERINEAL HERNIA: EVALUATION OF THE ROLE OF COLOPEXY ON SURGICAL AND CLINICAL OUTCOME

The objective of our study is to evaluate the influence of colopexy on both clinical and surgical outcome of dogs treated with perineal herniorrhapy and, if possible, to establish its impact on rectal dilatation. Moreover our second aim is to compare the results of our surgical approach to those almost published in veterinary literature. Our preliminary hypothesis is that colopexy might improve prognosis of dogs treated with herniorrhapy and could at least reduce the severity of secondary rectal dilatation. According to our results colopexy, whether combined with herniorrhapy, seems to affect positively the surgical outcome of dogs with complicated perineal hernias. Patients treated with both colopexy and herniorrhaphy had relevant lower incidence of recurrence compared with dogs treated with the only herniorrhaphy. On the other hand it was not possible to quantify the impact of colopexy on rectal dilatation. To our opinion it was due to the fact that previously reported classification criteria, based over clinical reliefs, did not demonstrate enough accuracy in the evaluation of grade of rectal dilatation and no other diagnostic tool was available. Nevertheless we can disprove previous hypothesis(6) according which colopexy is effective in solving rectal dilatation since it was uncommon event in our study. Surprisingly a slight worse clinical outcome was assessed in dogs treated with colopexy since a significant percentage of dogs still had mild tenusmus in the postoperative period. We did not find any correlation between this aspect and data regarding the surgical outcome. However all the owners declared as good the overall quality of life of their dogs. It was not possible to perform a satisfying compare between our studies and other data previously published due to the huge heterogeneity of duration and methodology of follow up collection. Therefore we want to undermine the importance, in the near future, to develop and employ standardize criteria in both the preoperative classification and postoperative follow up evaluation in veterinary literature on perineal hernia treatment. Since the scarcity of the sample and the lack of strict inclusion criteria we have to consider our results as preliminary. Therefore additional studies with larger population are needed to confirm our data.