LIVER SHUNT! Help!!
 

Ellie is 7 almost 8 months now and the vet told us she has a liver shunt ans she wouldn't live to see her first birthday!! :cry8: it is $1500 which is a lot but Of course we are going to do it!!! She is only 2.6lbs. I am afraid of loosing her in surgery because she is so small, how long do they take to recover and after surgery will she have no more problems? Anyone with any experience please help me. She has been throwing up a lot and hasn't gained weight so it makes sense. He bile or whatever should be at 10 the vet said and it's at 236... Any chance that everything will be ok??!! :( I don't want to loose my Ellie.

Sorry to hear of this, but many pups have had this surgery and do just fine. They must be keep quiet for the most part for 6-8 weeks after the surgery to allow healing and closure of the shunt, but then can live perfectly normal lives.

Is your vet a surgeon? I would suggest a second opinion from an internal medicine specialist. $1500. sounds too cheap! Normally this type of surgery runs from $2500. to $4500.

Univ of Tennessee - Dr Tobias is the leading expert in this field. If there is anyway to get you and your pup there, please go. If not, at least call them, to secure a referral from them of the closest to you surgeon they would recommend.

There are many threads on here about Liver Shunt, if you do a search you can review a lot of these threads.

I'm so sorry your pup is sick, and hope that she has a successful surgery.

Thanks everyone.. I will call him thank you for the recommendation! And thanks for your prayers Susan!

Thank you, my vet isn't but is sending me to one about 10 miles away and he quoted them for me. However I have been doing a lot of research and find that is cheap compared to other people, so I am going to have to do research as well on the specialist. Thank you for your help!:animal36

Sending prayers for your little girl:hands:

Make sure that you are seeing a board certified surgeon! You can find one at:

American College of Veterinary Surgeons

Prayers for Ellie.

Liver Shunt
 

I have a close friend whose 8 week old puppy had the surgery. First few months he was fragile but he lived a normal life until 8 yrs. old.

Great!! Thank you for this helpful link!

I have a 7 year old who had liver shunt surgery
 

I'm still have not uploaded pictures of Ziggy, but he is our Liver Shunt baby. He was diagnosed when he was 9 months old and had the surgery when he was 10 or 11 months old. He too would not gain weight. That was our first sign. His urine was always very dark yellow too. Looking back, that should have been a warning sign. I would feed him a scrambled egg every morning, we had my husband's brother stopping in the afternoon to feed him, we were so frantic. Our vet suggested liver shunt and we refused to accept it. When he finally got toxic and started walking like he was drunk, drooling, fighting with me, just not normal, we rushed to the emergency vet who confirmed our worse fears. It was liver shunt. Our vet sent us to a vet specialty place in the northern suburbs of Chicago. They were wonderful. Ziggy's LS was repairable. The tech told me "you will have a brand new dog." And she was right! Ziggy is now a robust 7 pounds and is very happy, active, and playful. He's has the cutest Yorkie face I've ever seen too (pictures soon, long story). There is hope and no reason your doggie can't do as well as Ziggy after surgery. I agree the $1,500 sounds a little low. We paid around $3,000 and that was in 2006. The surgeon told us to feed a low protein diet for life but other than that, he's fine. A recent blood test showed his liver was functioning great. Our vet was impressed with his "numbers" what with him having the liver shunt. We feed all our dogs K/D (I know it's not the best, but we feel we should follow the surgeon's advice) and no rawhides. We found these wonderful dried sweet potato chewies and Ziggy loves them. Follow up with your vet, do some research, and get your baby on medicine. There is medicine that helps the symptoms. We had to get it filled at the Walgreen's. Ziggy stayed on that for 6 months following surgery. After we brought him home from the surgery, we wondered what have we done. He was stitched from his "junk" up to his chest. He was whiney for that first day and by the next day, it was as if nothing had happened to him. Good luck. I know how you feel, so helpless and scared. Stay strong and keep us posted!

Is scrambled eggs not good for them? That's her favorite treat! Thank you so much for your story! Makes me more relaxed that I know other pups were okay after surgery :) gives me hope!:aimeeyork

Keeping Ellie in my prayers.

healing prayers for ellie

Sending prayers for Ellie.

I think scrambled eggs are fine and probably kept Ziggy alive. But now that he is prescribed a low protein diet, no more eggs. I felt guilty for feeding him eggs, which I believe are high in protein when he isn't suppopsed to have high protein. But as I said, I think those eggs kept him alive. Your vet should be able to tell you what he should be eating.

Praying for my Ellie <3
 

Update on Ellie:
Thank you for all of the prayers sent! We need them! Did the consultation and you guys prepared me well, surgery will end up being around $3,200. Which I am young and that is about all I have in savings. :( We are starting her on the different diet and medicine for now. All I can ask for is prayers so thank you for all of your support. We have to postpone the surgery a little so that i can save up so we have something to cushion on once we did it. And we will finance which will help. Thank you again for all of your support! Couldn't go through this without it!:heart to On a good note Ellie is happy and feeling good :) Goal is to be able to afford the surgery before it starts affecting her happiness and joy in life. <3 :aimeeyork

One large egg white has about 3.5 grams of protein in it.

An LS dog can have a tiny bit of egg whites, but it is best to keep on the RX food, bc it is formulated and has all the vits and minerals and the correct amount and kind of protein. (no yolks though)

Hello. My furbaby was going to get spayed, after the blood results showed her liver was at 358 when it should be 10-100. She was only 8 months old. The vet gave her "Science Diet Hill's L/D food" to lower her ALT levels. She hated that food so bad we tried the soft food and the dry she would not eat it. The vet said to not give inn and she would eat it. She would go a day or two with no food. So I researched online and found "Royal Canin L/S food" she love's it she is now 5 y/o and will be soon spayed. When she was 3 years her liver went down to 108, and she had a few double teeth and double molars witch where hurting her mouth. I decided to pull her teeth out before she would get spayed since my vet recommended doing 1 thing at a time (for her case). She did great. Now I’m getting ready to get her spayed and I’m very scared.

My vet told me that 4 out of 5 Yorkies have liver shunts and there is nothing to be worried about. I didn’t have to go through a liver shunt surgery so I’m not sure if this will help you. But I just wanted to share.

Sending prayers for Ellie and for you :aimeeyork

I'm sorry to disagree with your vet; but I've read no statistics that confirm your vet's opinion of 4 out of 5 Yorkies have liver shunt. That is a very large percentage = 80% of Yorkies have liver shunt. Perhaps a more reasonable percentage is any where from 3-5%.

Secondly Liver Shunts are definitely something to worry about. Particularly shunts that go undiagnosed, or heaven forfend diagnosed but untreated. They will definitely curtail both the longevity and health of your dog.

There is another condition called MVD, which is non operable, but can be managed by diet. The dogs so affected can live happily for many years, but do NOT have the life expectancy of an unaffected dog.