Clinical and Diagnostic Services

Please see below a summary of our most common clinical and diagnostic services:

X-ray

X-rays can be used to examine most areas of the body. They are most helpful when looking at the bones and joints, although they’re also frequently used to image soft tissue, such as internal organs.

X-rays are a type of radiation absorbed at different rates by different parts of the body. An x-ray plate on the other side of the body picks up the X-rays after they’ve passed through and turns them into an image.

Dense parts of your body (that X-rays find it more difficult to pass through), such as bone, show up as clear white areas on the image. Softer parts (that X-rays can pass through more easily), such as your heart and lungs, show up as darker areas.

We have a digital x-ray machine at Molecare so we can produce images very quickly without the need to process a wet film. This allows less time under anaesthetic and an easy transfer of images between General Practice and Referral/Second opinion if required.

Dental X-ray

Dental x-rays are now an integral part of all our dental procedures, and it is our opinion that dentals performed on animals should always involve the option to take a dental x-ray if required.  On direct visualisation of the tooth we can only see the crown of the tooth. We cannot see the root or jaw bone surrounding it without an x-ray. Substantial disease and pain can be associated with these areas and often without any outward sign of problem.

I’m sure we have all experienced some degree of tooth ache in our lives and it is likely our animals may have similar sensations regarding dental pain. The difference with animals is that they often do not show any external signs of this pain, as they have evolved in the wild to hide signs of discomfort and carry on eating at all costs. Combine the lack of symptoms with potentially normal looking teeth in the mouth, and it can be impossible to find sources of pain such as tooth root abscesses without a dental x-ray picture. Without dental x-ray, many sources of ongoing dental pain can be missed, with animals continuing with pain after a dental procedure.

For more information on dental x-rays and the conditions that they can be used to identify, please see our factsheet page here.

Electrocautery

Electrocautery, also known as thermal cautery, refers to a process in which a direct or alternating current is passed through a metal wire electrode, generating heat.

The heated electrode is then applied to living tissue to ‘cauterise’ and stop any bleeding. This comes in very handy when operating on areas that are highly vascular as it not only reduces blood loss but reduces operating time and therefore time under anaesthetic.

Intra-operative Suction

Intra-operative suction is a device used to suck excess fluid from a space during a surgical procedure. It is a sterile procedure where the equipment is handled by the surgeon scrubbed in at the time. Common uses include the repeated flushing of a contaminated surgical site with saline and thereafter suction to remove debris and reduce infection risk.

In addition, suction can be very useful in patients suffering from internal bleeding or fluid accumulation during surgery by improving visualisation during the procedure and in turn helping to reduce operating time. It can also be used to help empty stomach/bladder contents when surgery is performed in these locations, hence reducing the risk of abdominal contamination with potentially infectious fluids.

Capnography/ multiparameter anaesthetic monitoring

Capnography is the measurement and evaluation of the levels of carbon dioxide in a patient’s exhaled breath. This is an important component of anaesthesia because it helps the anaesthetist evaluate the patient’s respiratory rate, and also the quality of the respiration. This allows a better interpretation of the patient’s anaesthetic depth and hence is valuable in preventing the occurrence of hypoxic episodes (low oxygen in the blood).