BOAS: airway surgery helps but does not cure

This YouTube video above was posted by this French Bulldog's owners in an effort to help raise over $5000 for surgery to help the dog.

Thousands and thousands of short-faced dogs need this surgery - the consequence of our obsession with flat-faced "cute" dogs.

I don't know if Panda's owners were successful or not. I hope so. The dog was clearly suffering.

But, as a new paper reveals, while airway surgery can help some dogs, it is not a cure.

The team at the University of Leipzig featured in Pedigree Dogs Exposed: Three Years On looked at the success of the surgery they perform on brachycephalic dogs.

The owners of 62 dogs (37 Pugs and 25 French Bulldogs) completed a questionnaire following surgery.

The findings:

• life-threatening events reduced by 90% (choking decreased from 60% to 5%; collapse from 27% to 3%
• sleeping problems decreased from 55% to 3%
• the occurrence of breathing sounds declined by 50%
• there was a marked improvement in exercise tolerance
• there was a modest improvement in heat tolerance

But is was not a cure. As the authors say: "...despite the marked improvement perceived by dog owners, these dogs remained clinically affected and continued to show welfare-relevant impairments caused by these hereditary disorders."

We also know that BOAS is progressive and this study only looked at dogs up to six months post-surgery.

There's also the rather large point that we should not be breeding dogs with a high risk of choking, collapse, sleep problems, raspy breathing, and intolerance to exercise and heat.

Not quite sure how many times I can say that. But I'm not going to stop until we see more progress.