There are a few different things that we commonly do surgery on the liver for.  Most commonly we are removing masses or dealing with protosystemic shunts (PSS).

Liver masses that are solitary and not diffuse can usually be removed with surgery. The mass is then submitted to get a diagnosis which gives us direction for further treatment options. There are some risks with this surgery, the highest being bleeding due to the highly vascular nature of the liver. If this does happen we do have blood on hand for transfusions, which makes the procedure a bit less risky here at MECA.

PSS are blood vessels that divert blood around the liver. When blood is directed around the liver the liver is not able to filter the blood of toxins and this leads to the clinical signs that may be seen with this issue. Dogs can have depression, seizures and urinary stones. We can also see some bloodwork changes. We will commonly see this in small breed dogs like Yorkies, Maltese and Poodles to name a few. We see it most commonly in female dogs. It is a congenital issue so animals need to be spayed or neutered at the time of surgery.

There are 3 types of shunts; Intrahepatic (in the liver), Extrahepatic (outside the liver) and multiple extrahepatic. Multiple extrahepatic shunts are acquired due to a primary liver problem and can not be fixed with surgery. The majority of the shunts we see are single extrahepatic and these do very well with surgery, especially if you do surgery when they are young.

Surgery entails going into the abdomen to isolate the shunt and place a device around it to cause it to occlude slowly over a few weeks. This allows the blood flow to the liver to get back to normal and thereby allow the liver to do it’s job.

When a dog has a single extrahepatic shunt it has a very good prognosis (80% + success rate) for living a normal life once it has had surgery.