yesterday i received the sad news that one of my dog's littermates and a half-sibling bloated and died within three days of each other. both dogs were owned and lived with my dog's breeder. now she wants me to get a prophylactic gastropexy for my dog, so that i "won't have to go through what she just went through."

the dogs are all just over four years old. they are purebred english mastiffs, but smaller and more athletic than the breed normally is.

my dog, ben, is very athletic, has an extremely deep and wide chest for his size, and weighs 152 lbs. he is a slow eater, has been on the raw diet all his life, and is mellow in personality for the most part, but he is easily stressed and nervous in new situations. he had what might have been the beginings of a bloat episode two years ago, the morning after being in a conformation class. he hates showing and we have given up on it. the vet feels that episode was caused by stress. it resolved itself.

one of his sisters died last week after having had a small meal of innova evo, which my breeder's dogs get sometimes as a supplement to their raw diet. the half brother had an empty stomach. they live in florida, which has a much hotter climate, obviously, than where i live. summers there are especially stressful for dogs. i don't yet know what other mitigating factors there might have been. it does seem to me that the close timing of these two deaths implies that there was more going on than simply an inherited susceptibility.

i am reading everything i can on bloat and prophylactic gastropexy. ben has a risk factor of 2-3, which shouldn't necessarily make him a candidate, but.... we are often in the backcountry, far from help. and he does get stressed out easily. (though he LOVES hiking and backpacking and is at his best in those situations.)

does anyone here know how effective gastropexy is in preventing GVD in dogs with a family history of it? what exactly do they do during the procedure? what are the risks of this surgery and how would they compare to the risks of bloat? and how much should i discount the family relation versus the environmental causes?

just the other day i had to take my dog dylan to the vet..i fed him his food and 3 hours later we went to the park. he ran quite a bit like he normaly does but i noticed his stomach swelled up kinda like a cows stomach protrudes on the sides, it scared me to death! we went to the vet immediatly and the vet ran x-rays. She said fortunatly that dylans stomach didnt twist up inside of him or he would have died it just swoll up real big. she told me some vets can tack his stomach to the side of his chest and that would prevent bloat the surgery cost about 800.00 . I havent really shopped prices though. im going to get that surgery done on dylan soon being that hes such a active dog. and how common bloat is on deep chested dogs, and once they get bloat they have only a small window for treatment.
better to be safe than sorry.

Lost my 8-yr-old GSD last year to bloat. Rocco had been on a raw diet for ~5 yrs. and was pretty inactive due to a bad hip, so none of the "usual" exercise/kibble factors. My vet had no explanation for it. In a previous thread here a while back, there was some mention of a study that indicated that stress could be a contributing factor.

Seemed to fit in my case. About 4-5 days before he died, Rocco started having 1-2 nosebleeds a day. Vet found nothing on exam and x-ray. He scheduled a biopsy as he suspected some nasal cancer/tumor, but Rocco died the evening before.

Stress? Yeah, between what the dog must have been feeling plus picking up on my own stress/concern, I can see that as a factor.

I'd have to do more research on the stapling treatment to know the pros/cons, but sounds on it's face to be a good solution. If a dog develops bloat in the middle of the night when you're asleep, it's over.

i got some new information. there were three bitches in heat in the house. one of the deaths was an intact bitch. the other was an intact male. the dogs were kept separated, but they could see and smell each other.

all my research is showing body type to be the biggest correlation.

could others please speak to their experience with this?

has anyone had experience with stomach tacking to avoid GVD?

 Quote:

............all my research is showing body type to be the biggest correlation.

could others please speak to their experience with this?

has anyone had experience with stomach tacking to avoid GVD?

I have no experience. I do have some info out of Tufts and other vet med schools.

You're correct about the risk being body-configuration-related, which explains why deep-chested breeds are the ones prone to bloat.

QUOTE:
Several risk factors were identified. The dogs with the greatest risk of developing bloat have chests that are deep and narrow. This can be evaluated by measuring the depth and the width of the chest. Then the depth is divided by the width. The depth-to-width ratio reflects the amount of room there is for stomach movement in the abdomen, behind the ribcage. The higher the result, the more room there is for movement. Dogs with more room have a greater risk of developing bloat. END QUOTE
from:
http://www.vin.com/proceedings/Proceedings.plx?CID=TUFTSBG2003&PID=5091&O=Generic

The article updates other factors (kibble diets and nervous disposition) as well as apparent non-factors (bowls on the floor, etc.).

My instinctive reaction to surgery for a "might happen" crisis is so negative..... but I am not any kind of a health professional and my instincts mean nothing.

I see from research that this is a highly individual assessmen. The article suggests how to assess your own dog's risk.

thanks, connie. ben does have a high risk body type. his ribs are flatter, and he has a long, lean, athletic build.

i'm going to talk to the vet today about doing the stomach tack. i also have a dire aversion to prophylactic surgery, however, from the little i've read, it is possible that a cost/benefit analysis will come out in favor of having it done.

i really had hoped someone here might have had some experience with it--how well it holds up, if it prevented gvd, what the surgery was like, how long it took the dog to recover, any after efffects, etc. there is remarkably little on this online. mostly just comments that it is sometimes used to prevent gvd.

do you know of any veterinary medical journals that might have this information? maybe i'm just not hitting the right search engines.

 Quote:

............do you know of any veterinary medical journals that might have this information? maybe i'm just not hitting the right search engines.

OK, these are extracts.

The first one is out of Purdue -- "Benefits of prophylactic gastropexy for dogs at risk of gastric dilatation-volvulus" ---

http://lcme.vet.purdue.edu:8080/cgi-bin/reference/refDetail.cgi?REFID=166&DEPT=3

This one is out of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Auburn University --- "A comparison of laparoscopic and belt-loop gastropexy in dogs" ---
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query...p;dopt=Abstract

This is an overview of surgical technique from the Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association --- "Clinical Evaluation of a Right-Sided Prophylactic Gastropexy Via a Grid Approach" ---
http://www.jaaha.org/cgi/content/abstract/39/4/397

And this page has many links to other AVMA Journal extracts on the topic of prophylactic gastropexy:
http://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/abs/10.2460/ajvr.2001.62.871

connie,
you are a wonder. thank you ever so much. i am going to read the links right now.