Cost - price of intestinal surgery

[drzaeis]

My 14 yr old pit bull ( Saucy)had sand in his small intestine.The vet had tried fluids for approx 1 hour and it had gotten worse.It was considered blocked and surgery was neccessary.

Procedure was one hour long and was successful. I am being told the surgery alone is somewhere between $4-$5000 dollars plus the prior treatment. which will be at least an additional $800.

Saucy had surgery last nite and i'm supposed to pick him up today if all goes well. So hos total time in the hospita; would have been less than 24 hours.

I'm wondering what others have paid for this type of surgery and are vet fees negotiable at all.

BTW: i can pay it and authorized all expenses but it is going to break my bank and it does seem like a lot of money.

Thanks for any info in advance

[seeana]

I am so sorry ...... missed the part about you losing your little guy.I have read your post properly now  and I know how you feel.

You should not have to pay for the second op ....it would be the only profession that you have to pay for their mistakes.

I hope you can move on and with time get another dog as life is not the same without them.

[lindapalm]

If it was me, I would tell the vet you  shouldn't be charged for the second surgery because it was necessary because the first one didn't go right.  It might not do any good, but is worth a try.  I am so sorry for what happened to your dog, pit bulls can be the nicest dogs there are, and you must be heartbroken.  

[deadgamegrrl]

I don't know the answer but I am so sorry for your loss.  I cna't imagine how awful this is for you.
Hugs...

[seeana]

When we had racehorses our old guy used to get sand in his gut and our vet told us to  Psyllium  husk in his food as it picked up the sand as it was really sticky and boy did it work well the sand that came out was amazing.

I put it on my corn flakes the trade name here is Metamusel so its comepletly harmless and its a bit like all bran,cant see why it wont work on dogs and its good for you.
Maybe you can put some in his food to stop anymore sand building up.

Google it anyway and it will explain how it works on horses and humans.

[weheartpetcare]

My husband and I took our 1.5 yr old pit bull into the vet last saturday and they took x-rays and found a foreign object in his intestines. They kept him over night on fluids. Sunday morning they decided on surgery to remove it.
They found a mass of gluey substance which we believed to have been my hairbrush handle that was a gel material. They also removed string from rope toys and little bits of plastic from toys he had chewed on. They made 4 incisions in his intestines, 1 in his stomach, and 1 in his colon.
They kept him on antibiotics and Tuesday afternoon they called us and said that his incisions were leaking and they were going to do exploratory surgery to find the problem. It turns out that one of the incisions in his intestines had leaked and contaminated all his insides. They had cleaned everything up and as they were taking the clamps off a blod clot threw to his heart and killed him instantly.  

The vet is charging us $1700 for both surgeries even though they told us that they were worried about the one incision that did, in fact, come open so that they needed to do another surgery.

Q: Should we pay the vet the full amount since they did not seem to ensure that the incision was secure before they closed him up? Does this seem negligent on their part? Please...I need answers!

[Colz_83]

Vet prices do range considerably.  When I called around about getting my rabbit nautered prices were from $118 to $500.

[kyrspark]

thats expensive; my vet is charging 1300. I was looking to see if i could find a surgeon less than that. I have read people paying around 800 for the surgery.

[makop]

My dog had an infection of some kind. The doctor ran all kinds of test for $650.00 then said they had to do surgery. They more or less spayed her. This is to cost us another $800.00. Is this a normal cost?

[peekawho]

Yeah, I think it can vary greatly.  Our dogs intestinal surgery was about $3000 (but was several years ago).  The vet did let us make payments...it took a long time to pay it all off.  

I think $5000 seems pretty high, though.  Our dog had lots of complications, 4 days in the hospital, more than a week of IV antibiotics...lots of things.  

There is a program called CareCredit (you can google it) that is a credit card that can only be used for either vet bills or medical bills.  You could see if you qualify.  

[have 2 kids]

I imagine vet bills vary in different locations just like food, gas, and everything else.   Our golden retriever required emergency surgery for a blocked intestine.  Her surgery and treatment was $1200.00  She was at the vet's for 3 days.     (we have also used the same vet clinic for 7 years so maybe they gave us a deal)   I hope your dog recovers quickly.