This cat was hit by a car and was lucky to come out of it with just a broken leg. The xray shows the pelvis and the long bone extending to the left is the broken femur. The break was a spiral fracture and if you look carefully you can see that it was multiple with one large fragment sliced off below. A smaller fragment was not so obvious.

The cat was first given a general anaesthetic. This starts with a rapid acting intravenous injection to induce anaesthesia. An endotracheal tube is inserted into the trachea (windpipe) and connected to a gas anaesthetic machine which supplies the cat with oxygen and a level of gas anaesthetic to keep him asleep. The photo shows our patient in the theatre with the anesthetic machine attached and the leg shaved in preparation for the surgery.

The shaved portion of the upper leg is scrubbed clean and sterilised drapes are used to protect the surgery site from any contamination. Some of the surgical instruments to be used for the surgery can be seen laid out on the surgery trolly with the draped leg in the background.

The fractured femur is exposed with an incision through the skin and musculature of the upper leg.
The exposed femur in this photo has already had two of the circlage wires applied to attach the larger fragment of bone to the proximal (top) part of the femur. The instrument on the right is a bone chuck with the intramedullary pin that is to be used. This instrument is simply a device like a hand drill to grip the pin so that it can be hand driven up the shaft of the broken bone. The pin is first driven up the proximal femur, through the top of the bone and back to the outside. The broken ends are then realigned and the pin is driven back down the distal (lower) end of the femur. A further two circlage wires were then required to fully stabilise this fracture.

The final photo is the post operative xray showing the four circlage wires and the pin sitting within the intramedullary cavity of the femur. Generally these pins are removed at a later stage once healing has occurred, but often the wires are left in permanently.