References
A patient care report of a dog that had hemilaminectomy surgery to decompress the spinal cord

Abstract
This article describes the nursing care involved in caring for a spinal patient from the time of admission, pre, peri and post operatively. It highlights the importance of nursing care and treating each patient as an individual. Nursing interventions discussed include monitoring under anaesthesia, post-operative monitoring, bladder management and rehabilitation. An understanding of the importance of postoperative monitoring and rehabilitation is required to promote the patient's recovery in addition to being confident in different bladder management techniques.
The patient presented with per acute onset paraparesis, with no known history of trauma. Due to the patient's breed predisposition and previous history of an intervertebral disc (IVD) extrusion at T13–L1 which required surgical intervention, she was referred to the hospital as an emergency out of hours patient.
Neurological examination revealed paraparesis with very weak lower motor neuron function demonstrated by delayed proprioception in the hindlimbs. The patient was deep pain (DP) positive and spinal reflexes were normal. The veterinary surgeon (VS) localised T3–L3 to be the most likely area of compression. General examination revealed no other concerns.
The patient was admitted and a blood sample was obtained for manual packed cell volume (PCV), total solids (TS) and in-house biochemistry. Intravenous access was gained in the right forelimb cephalic vein.
The patient was pre-medicated with 0.02 mg/kg of acepromazine (Calmivet 5 mg/ml, Vetoquinol) and methadone 0.3 mg/kg (Comfortan 10 mg/ml, Dechra) prior to receiving the blood results, which later revealed no abnormalities. The patient was anaesthetised using 4 mg/kg propofol (PropoFlo Plus 10 mg/ml, Zoetis) and maintained on isoflurane (Zoetis) inhalation agent once intubated for diagnostic imaging and possible surgery. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the ideal imaging technique for investigating spinal cord problems (Whitfield, 2010). However, due to the patient presenting out of hours the VS decided to use computed tomography (CT) which shows good detail when imaging thoracolumbar vertebrae (Olby and Thrall, 2004). The CT imaging revealed Hansen type I (disc extrusion) at the disc space L1–L2 which was lateralised to the left hand side. The patient was moved through to the radiography room where clipping and surgical preparation for a marker took place (Box 1). A marker was placed in L1 spinal vertebra and a lateral thoracolumbar spinal radiograph was taken to confirm this (Figure 1).
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