Introducing Our New Brachycephalic Care Unit (BCU) at VSS Jindalee

What is the BCU?

The BCU has been established as an exclusive brachycephalic precinct with the specific goal of reducing the number of stress-inducing visits a brachycephalic patient may need to make to a specialist hospital. Additionally, the risk of anaesthetising a brachycephalic patient is much higher than for non-brachycephalic patients. In some cases, we can reduce the number of anaesthetics required by proactively involving more specialty services from the outset. For some patients, two shorter anaesthetics are preferable to a single long one. We can discuss all the pros and cons with owners.

We believe in providing owners with maximum information about their brachycephalic pets following a visit with us. This allows owners to make ongoing decisions that they feel are in the best interest of their pet. Information is a powerful tool. Some owners of brachycephalic pets may believe that some or all of the clinical symptoms their pet displays are normal for the breed, when in fact, the pet may be suffering from exercise intolerance, sore eyes or regurgitation. These misconceptions are never intentional. Often, once they are fully informed, owners want to know what the options are to improve their pet’s quality of life.

A further goal of ours is to integrate the brachycephalic pet owner into the health team. In 2023, a scientific paper published in the Journal of Small Animal Practice revealed that brachycephalic patients recover from airway surgery with a lower risk of complications if the owner is present at recovery time. Since this publication, we have exclusively allowed owners behind the scenes into our brachycephalic recovery space to sit with their pets for a few hours during the post-operative period. This initiative has proven highly successful in reducing patient stress during recovery from airway surgery.

BCU aims to improve the quality of life of the brachycephalic pet and reduce complications associated with surgery or hospitalisation. This has been an area of research for VSS for the past 20 years.

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a series of posts outlining more about VSS Jindalee's new BCU, as well as the common conditions we treat brachycephalic patients for and how BCU aims to identify other health conditions during their visits with us.

Please phone our Jindalee team on (07) 3193 6500 or email vssjindalee@vss.net.au for more information.