Beleza is a beautiful 7-year-old European Shorthair. She once was a stray cat who roamed the streets of Italy until she was rescued by her lovely owner.
She came in for a routine health check and during our nose to tail examination we noticed she had severe periodontitis. This is a serious gum inflammation that damages the soft tissue and destroys the tissue and bone that supports the teeth. Beleza has not shown any signs of issues with her teeth at all, she was still eating her food normally.
We recommended booking in for a comprehensive oral health assessment (COHAT) so we could determine the nature of the disease and what treatment was required. A COHAT requires a full general anaesthetic so we can fully examine all the mouth and gums as well as taking a full set of dental x-rays. So much of what we see in our patients is below the gumline so x-rays are a vitally important part of assessment of any suspected dental disease
As she is a mature girl we recommended full bloods before she came in and underwent a general anesthetic. As Beleza is on our Feline Fine Health Plan we were able to do full bloods and a urine test at no extra cost. (She also received 10% off the final bill)
Once we had Beleza in for her COHAT we started with the X Rays (see attached) As you can see she had lots of bone loss. We then use a probe to assess all sides of each and every one of the teeth to determine if there is evidence of gingival (gum) recession, bone loss, tooth resorption or infection and all of this is recorded on an electronic chart which we then attach to our records for future reference. Nerve blocks are placed prior to any painful interventions. What these allow us to do is to block the pain before it begins which means we can reduce dramatically the level of anaesthetic we need to use to keep our patients asleep which means they can recover quickly and get eating immediately.
There was a lot of inflammation present so the decision was made to remove a total of 10 teeth. These are surgical extractions where we create a small flap to expose the roots then gently remove bone around these roots so they can be extracted without leaving anything behind. Once they are removed the bone surrounding the extraction sites is all smoothed down and the flap we have made is closed leaving a nice tidy surface that will heal very quickly.
Beleza recovered quickly and was ravenous when she woke up! She had a nice dinner with us and when she got home she had 2 extra potions of food. She was discharged with two types of pain relief to address any post-operative pain relief until we could see her for her recheck.
Beleza came back in 4 days later for a post op check and her mouth looked amazing, we were so happy.
As you know cats hide their pain very well, much like Beleza and after having her dental procedure you can see the difference!
Well done Beleza!