Dr. David Dycus provides a practical, in-depth look at managing canine hip dysplasia, from early diagnosis to surgical interventions in this episode of Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. Dr. Andy Roark sits down with . Dr. Dycus to discuss the various treatment options, including juvenile pubic symphysiodesis (JPS), pelvic osteotomies, and total hip replacements. He explains the importance of early detection, especially in breeds predisposed to hip dysplasia, and breaks down when and why certain surgical options are recommended. This episode is essential for veterinary professionals looking to better understand orthopedic surgery decisions and help guide pet owners through difficult choices. Gang, let’s get into this episode….
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LINKS
Dr. David Dycus: https://drdaviddycus.com/
Dr. David Dycus on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ortho_vet/
Dr. Andy Roark Resources: https://linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/charming-the-angry-client/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: https://drandyroark.com/store
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Dycus attended Mississippi State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine for his veterinary degree, Auburn University for a small animal rotating internship, and Mississippi State for a combined surgical residency and Masters degree.
Dr. Dycus is frequently asked to lecture locally, nationally, and internationally. He has given over 250 continuing education lectures and taught over 150 laboratories. He has published numerous research articles and authored or co-authored several book chapters. He is the co-editor of the textbook: Complications in Canine Cranial Cruciate Ligament Surgery. In 2023 Dr. Dycus received the Veterinary Hero’s Award in surgery by DVM360 and was named by DVM360.com as one of the 10 veterinarians to watch in 2018. Dr. Dycus is a frequent contributor for updates in orthopedics to several veterinary websites and magazines. Dr. Dycus has also been featured on Sirius XMs Doctor Radio’s segment on Pet Health and Orthopedics. His passion for teaching has allowed Dr. Dycus to become a laboratory instructor for the CBLO, TPLO, extra-capsular stabilization, medial patella luxation, angular limb deformity, and fracture repair. He is on faculty for AO (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Osteosynthesefragen), and he is an orthopedic consultant for VIN (Veterinary Information Network).
Dr. Dycus became a certified canine rehabilitation practitioner through the University of Tennessee in 2015. He is the founder and surgeon at Fusion Veterinary Orthopedics where he has a focus on total joint replacement, complex and minimally invasive fracture repair as well as angular limb deformity correction, 3D implant printing, and arthroscopy. In addition, he is the founder of Ortho Vet Consulting, an educational consulting and orthopedic coaching service.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I got a great one for you with my good friend, Dr. David Dycus. Dr. Dycus is an orthopedic veterinary surgeon. And if you haven’t heard him on the podcast before, you’ve been missing out. He is just a fantastic resource on all things orthopedics.
And today we’re talking about hip dysplasia. Guys we see hip dysplasia, we wrestle with hip dysplasia. I wanted a very fast download on the surgical options for hip dysplasia and when they’re appropriate, meaning when in the lifespan of the dog and yeah and what they entail and just just get me up to speed on our surgical options here, Dr.
Dycus. And he did and it was great and it’s not what I was taught in vet school 15 years ago. There has been a number of advancements and of course there has, that’s great. But it is really good. He makes a lot of points and I go, Oh yeah, that totally makes sense. Anyway, this was a fantastic conversation.
This is going to affect how I talk about hip dysplasia in the exam room. I hope it’ll make that impact for you as well. Let’s get into it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome back to the podcast, Dr. David Dycus how are you, my friend?
Dr. David Dycus: Oh, I’m fantastic. Thanks for having me back again.
Dr. Andy Roark: Man, it is always my pleasure. I so enjoy having you in the podcast and getting to talk to you and learn from you. You are a very, very smart guy. You’re also a very, very busy guy. You are, for those who don’t know, you are a lecturer. I’ve seen you lecture all over the place. You write a ton.
You are also the founder and owner of OrthoVet Consulting. And, because you don’t have enough going on, your new venture is a surgery specialty hospital outside of Washington, D.C. It is Fusion Veterinary Orthopedics. Which when are you set to open?
Dr. David Dycus: Hopefully, we’re going to be opening in mid October of 2024. So, not far. Things are moving quick.
Dr. Andy Roark: You are right there just staring at the finish line from where we are. I appreciate the heck out of you being here. One of the things that I always like to talk to you about when we get together and we’ve got orthopedics on the table, I always like to keep this thing super practical and I want to keep growing my own skills in the exam room and making sure that I’m giving pet owners the advice that’s going to help them.
And I have had a string recently of hip dysplasia cases. I have got a couple variants. I’ve got the German Shepherd puppy that’s vocalizing when I stretch his hips out, which maybe it’s just behavior. Maybe he’s just tired of being handled. But I’m concerned. And then I’ve got obviously the older dogs that are having a lot of hip dysplasia.
They’re just very minimal muscle mass in the back end and sort of everything in between. And so I’m looking at these patients. I’m thinking about what we can do for them. And today, what I really wanted to do was get a rundown with you of hip dysplasia, surgery options, what are my options for trying to surgically intervene in these hip dysplasia cases?
And then also, when is it appropriate? Because I know that there are some cases that we say earlier in life is I would probably go for this and later in life we’re going to go for that. And so I was wondering if you could help me just as an overview, what are my options for surgery and when would I put these options into play?
Dr. David Dycus: Great questions. And a lot of it is going to depend on the age of the dog, the clinical signs they’re having, the breed. And so what I like to think about is if we’re going to think surgery, we’re going to put them in the category of potentially hip joint improvement in terms of the anatomy.
Versus moving more towards a salvage option which would be doing something more definitive to the actual joint itself. And what I mean by that is we can take the improvement in the hip joints category and there’s usually two surgical procedures that we would put into that category. One is what’s called a JPS.
And we all call it a JPS because it stands for juvenile pubic symphysiodesis, so it’s just easier to say JPS. And then the other would be either a triple or double pelvic osteotomy. And so the reasoning age comes into play and breed is the cutoff points for these two procedures are very, very different.
So with a JPS and the whole theory here is with hip dysplasia, there’s laxity of the hip joint. So when the animal is trying to walk and when the leg is in the air, the femoral head is subluxating from the acetabulum. And then when the foot strikes the ground, it causes the femoral head to crash back into the acetabulum.
And that creates. Abnormal wear and tear on the cartilage, which we all know will lead to arthritic changes. And so, in dogs with hip laxity that are very, very young, we can do things to try to improve the coverage of the femoral head and the acetabulum. And so, a JPS would come into play in dogs at around 16 weeks of age.
One has to have a very high suspicion of a dog with hip dysplasia at four months of age. Because these are usually still bouncing, happy, go puppies. And so, in these situations, we usually look more towards breeds that are tend to be predisposed. So we think German Shepherds, we think Rottweilers, we think Labradors, we think Golden Retrievers, Newfoundlands.
And in these dogs, if they come from a line that has dogs that have previously had hip dysplasia, or perhaps there’s poor breeding practices. Somebody says, Hey, I’ve got this beautiful German shepherd. Somebody in the Walmart parking lot was selling puppies and we, we picked one up.
What do you think, to me, my, my bells are going off. Oh, there’s probably some backyard breeding going on. And, and in that case, a JPS, we make a little incision just above the pubis. And we actually prematurely fuse the cranial part of the pubis. And when we do that, as the animal’s growing, it actually pushes the acetabulum outward and over.
So it actually covers over the femoral head as they’re developing. But if we wait until after, say, 18 weeks of age, then the degree of coverage there isn’t going to be enough to really help us. And the whole goal. Is to try to improve the coverage to minimize changes to the cartilage and thus minimize arthritic changes in life. And if one is astute enough, they could do an exam in a puppy and every puppy squirmy, so you try to extend their hips and every puppy is going to squirm like. It’s bothersome to them, but the reality is many times they’re just not used to being held that way. So what I would recommend an individual do would be to check what’s called an Ortolani, which is a test to check for laxity of the hips.
And that’s done by basically putting a hand sort of on the dorsum of the dog and then taking the other hand at the knee and you sort of push up on the femur And then that will cause the femoral head to subluxate. And then you start to pull the leg away a little bit. And that would cause the catastrophic reduction.
So you’re listening for a thud or a click or a
Dr. Andy Roark: And it pops back in?
Dr. David Dycus: Yep, exactly.
Dr. Andy Roark: How does the dog react to this?
Dr. David Dycus: So in some situations, if the hips are really lax, they usually don’t even react at all. The challenge though is if there’s mild laxity, they could have some muscle strength that could prevent you from being able to get a positive Ortolani when they’re awake.
And so in a otherwise healthy dog that’s there for, say, a routine vaccine visit, I’m going to look at the breed of the dog. I’m going to, And if it’s negative and the breeding of the dog has been very, very good meaning that it comes from a reputable breeder and, and, you know, the, all the due diligence has been done then we might not jump to saying, okay, let’s sedate just to make sure we, we don’t get an Ortolani.
But if I have a dog that we’re just not sure about the breeding principles or I’m not sure if I’m getting an Ortolani or there’s a little bit of discomfort on hip extension, then I might say, okay, it might be worth doing a quick sedation just to check for hip laxity and at the same time get hip x rays.
And we want to get well positioned hip x rays, but we have to remember that when we do that. We put them on their back, we pull their legs down and that actually forces the femoral head into the acetabulum So if there’s mild laxity there, you might miss it and so one of the cool things that people can do and I think the training is free is Become pin hip certified and if you’re pin hip certified What you could do is take the pin hip radiographs and that gives us what’s called a distraction index, which is, tells us the degree of laxity.
And if that distraction index is above say 0. 3 or is on the upper end for that particular breed, then you could do a JPS. You could say, okay, we’ve got a German Shepherd. We believe breeding was good. But when I was manipulating their hips, they were a little more squirmy than I thought they should be on hip extension.
Or I was trying to do an Ortolani and I thought I got it, but the dog was also a little bit reactive, which they, I wouldn’t have expected them to be. So we talked to the owner about sedating. We check Ortolani when they’re sedated, we get our well positioned hip radiographs, and then we do a pin hip. And if the pin hip number is higher than it should be, we can say, okay, we need to do a JPS.
And, for that to take place, we really have to start this thought process of looking into these dogs when they’re very young.
Dr. Andy Roark: Like when they’re a fetus. Like three weeks before they’re born, we should start talking to the client about, do you, okay. I’m
Dr. David Dycus: so what I would say is, think about when they’re coming in for that. I don’t know, was it 12, 13, 14 week vaccine appointment? Make that, and I think that usually correlates to when they’re getting the rabies vaccine, maybe make that visit where you check hip extension, check Ortolani.
Dr. Andy Roark: Okay.
Dr. David Dycus: And you don’t have to do that in a dachshund, or in a greyhound if anybody’s ever actually seen a greyhound puppy.
But, in a German Shepherd, in a Labrador, in a Golden Retriever, absolutely I think it’s worthwhile to check. And then the other one that would be super easy is the dog’s actually having an issue. And so the owner brings them to you, he’s really slow to get up or, he tries to jump on the sofa, but he can’t, or he refuses.
Then that obviously would warrant a more in depth workup, but you can do some slight screening at that visit that really shouldn’t take a lot of time. But if some of your little red flags go off, then it says, okay. We’re not going to do this at today’s visit, but let’s get you in maybe next week and let’s get this kind of figured out just so we can be safe.
Dr. Andy Roark: Do you do a lot of these procedures, David? I mean, in all seriousness, it’s just, I was gonna say, it seems like such a specific case. I, when you said, hey, this pet’s coming in he’s really slow to get up. He’s not, his litter mates are behaving and he’s not, to me, I go, okay, that would be the type of flag where I go, oh, we’ve got someone who’s attuned to what’s going on.
They’ve got a basis for comparison to other dogs. It’s terrifying, I think, to have that conversation with a 12 week old puppy’s owner and say, we’re talking about a permanent alteration of your dog because I’m, I’m worried about what this is going to happen.
And it just, there’s, there seems like there’s so much pressure to say, well, let’s wait and see how it goes. And again I’m really checking myself here. I think your idea of checking Ortolani, I think that’s a real pearl for me to take away and go, I think I can get into that. The reminder at that 12 week visit, I think I can see me really starting to lean into that and to really dig into that orthopedic history there.
I think that makes a lot of sense. I, it, the whole thing, I’ll be honest, my, my hands are sweating because I’m like, oh man, that, that recommendation, unless the owner comes to me and says, I’m concerned because of what I’m seeing that feels like such a hard call to make of, let’s go for it.
That, that’s, I don’t know. I would struggle with that.
Dr. David Dycus: And I think you just hit the nail on the head. And you hit the nail on the head on the fact that why many of us don’t do many of these procedures is because they get missed. Because it’s not on our radar. And we also don’t want to be Debbie Downer to the clients that have a bouncing puppy.
Dr. Andy Roark: And the puppies often, they’re squirming. They’re wiggling. I’ll put a puppy’s hips in extension and they go, Ah! And I’ll go, is, are you just, are you doing that because it hurts? Or are you just doing that because you’re tired of this guy giving you this weird petting?
Yeah, and I don’t know. A lot of times, I’m I have to do it a couple of times and try to interpret what’s going on. Yeah.
Dr. David Dycus: yeah and I think once you, palpate enough puppies, you get kind of used to what squirminess versus wait a minute, this is a little bit more, but the way I look at it is, you know, yes, you might have to be the deliverer of bad news, but in theory, if we could do a JPS. There may be the need to do nothing more later in life.
So it’s like, we could have this conversation now, or I ignore it, and then you guys come back in when the dog’s two or three, and now we got to start having a discussion on how we’re gonna manage this for life. Are we now having to be committed to something like a total hip replacement, or you know, and I always think back to myself, well gosh, if we had been more proactive, could we not even be in this boat?
And it’s the same way I approached the whole aspect of osteoarthritis. If we could just be more proactive at recognizing and bringing in the discussion before we get to the point of them having clinical signs, I think we can be a lot better at managing the, the long term aspect of things.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. That, that totally makes sense. I think you’re spot on. I appreciate you speaking to that. But, you know, I remember being taught JPS in vet school and that was always my thought was, am I ever going to have the confidence to say, let’s do it? And I think your point of looking back and saying, could we have prevented this?
Could we have taken action earlier? I, ah, yeah. It’s it’s tough. Talk to me a little bit about the pelvic osteotomy. So if we’re talking about less than 18 weeks here, for the JPS, what kind of window are we looking at there?
Dr. David Dycus: Usually those are going to be the dogs that we didn’t really pay attention to when they were 12, 13 weeks old. And then the clients start to notice an issue at, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 months of age. And these are dogs that actually have clinical signs. A JPS is more of a prophylactic type procedure.
Whereas a pelvic osteotomy is you realize that there’s now clinical signs. There’s pain on hip manipulation. There’s radiographic evidence of hip laxity, but there’s no arthritic changes to the hips at this point. Then you would say, okay, sometime around that eight to 12 month time frame, we’re going to actually go in and make two to three different incisions in the pelvis, cut the bone in two to three different places.
And we’re actually going to physically move the pelvis so that the acetabulum rotates over the femoral head. So you’re basically doing what a JPS would have done, but now the animal is at a point where a JPS wouldn’t be effective. So now you have to physically cut the bone and move it and put a bone plate on there.
And, the challenge here, and I remember during my residency in the first few years out in practice, I would do these pelvic osteotomies, but then as I was out longer, I would see these dogs years and years later, and They would still develop pretty horrendous arthritic changes. And now the owner’s like, okay, now what do we do?
You know, you said we were going to do this and it should help. And yeah, it helped for, X number of years, but now they’ve got arthritic changes. So now we’re back to what we’ll talk about in a moment on the salvage aspect of things. And so. a lot of us from a surgeon standpoint that deal with, patients with hip dysplasia, many of us don’t do mini pelvic osteotomies anymore because as we’ll talk about in a moment, we’ve got some other options available to us.
But the key finding of a pelvic osteotomy is that they have to have clinical signs. So she would never do it in a dog that does not have hip pain. So you would never do it as more of a prophylactic thing like you would a JPS. And they also cannot have radiographic evidence of arthritic changes. And the challenge is most of them at that point, if you really start scrutinizing a radiograph have arthritic changes.
They’re just not jumping out at you like when we think about looking at a radiograph and going, oh gosh Those hips look horrible, you know, you may glance at these and be like, oh the hips look fine But if you really start scrutinizing it, you’ll see some changes associated with arthritic changes.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah that definitely feels like you’re threading the needle. You need clinical signs, but not radiographic changes, and it feels like you’re really trying to hit a certain window. Okay so talk to me about these alternatives.
Dr. David Dycus: So once we’ve moved out of those categories, we’re left with what we consider our salvage procedures and and the two there would be a femoral head and neck ostectomy or the so called fho and then the other would be a total hip replacement and I feel like where we can bring in those procedures could really be in the young, the middle, and the older parts of life, but there’s going to be different criteria associated with that.
I will say that I always, from an FHO standpoint, put that at the very end of the list, the very last thing I would ever do to a dog. And, I feel like many a times veterinarians dog comes in, say at the age of one and a half or two, and they’ve got hip pain and they take an X ray and they’re like, Oh, they’re, they’ve got hip laxity, they’ve got arthritic changes, let’s do an FHO.
I would reserve an FHO for the absolute last quality of life is absolutely suffering standpoint before I would consider it and a total hip replacement would have to be totally out of the question.
Dr. Andy Roark: Tell me more about that, right? Like I’m with you. I’ve sort of seen the FHO higher on the list. It’s something, it can be fairly cost effective for pet owners. People go, well, we can make this pain go away right now. Break that down for me a little bit more as to why it’s so far down the list and the total hip has to be off the table.
Dr. David Dycus: Yeah. So the reasoning for that. So number one before the advent of hip replacements and people, they would lop off your femoral head and they’d do an FHO. And it left people permanently crippled for the rest of their lives. They had that 100 percent of people had to walk with a cane afterwards.
And in dogs, yes, there are studies that would say, Hey, dogs seem to do well after an FHO, but their owner perceived versus the reality. But what I will say is after an FHO hip extension, Is restricted in every single case and hip extension is critical to limb function. Maintenance of range of motion is critical to limb function.
So will it relieve the discomfort of the femoral head on the acetabulum? Yes. But what we’re forgetting is that we also typically have a lot of scar tissue around the hip. And in fact, after an FHO, you’re relying on scar tissue around the hip to develop. All of those things are inhibiting range of motion.
And so we don’t take in the soft tissue, the muscular aspect of things following an FHO and the pain associated with those soft tissues. And so the other excuse where people will say, well, it’s cheaper. The actual process of doing an FHO is cheaper. But as I said, Maintenance of range of motion is critical, and so for me, if I were to agree to do an FHO, I require the owners to enroll their pets into a formalized rehabilitation program that starts at about five days out from surgery, because the whole goal there is they’re starting to work on hip extension.
And getting hip extension and I’m sure many of us have done an FHO and the little dog comes in at two weeks for suture removal and the leg is held in a flex position and you try to move the hip and it doesn’t move and at that point we’re so far behind the eight ball we’ll never get normal hip extension back but what I found is if FHO enroll them into a formal rehab program and we do that for up to about 12 weeks We can get the hip extension range close to the normal range not normal But close to the normal range so that we can have the best outcome as possible. But on the cost front if you take in the cost of surgery plus the cost of rehab When we did a price comparison, it actually came out to be 30 more expensive to do that over a total hip replacement.
Dr. Andy Roark: And you’ve got 12 weeks of work, right? Like the owners have to be committed to this. It doesn’t do itself.
Dr. David Dycus: If we’re wanting to achieve what I would consider to be an appropriate outcome, keeping the pets pain at the forefront and limb function then yeah, absolutely.
And then people will like to say, well, we’re going to rely on the owners to do some stretching at home. The problem is, is that the owners can do that, but they’re not going to be able to push the hip into extension to the amount that’s needed to really improve it. Because they’re worried about hurting their pet whereas the rehab therapist knows how much to push on the tissues and how to get the tissues to respond and react Because the thing that we always forget about is we look at a radiograph and we say, okay the disease ball’s gone And now they’re going to feel better, but we’re not thinking about what does that feel like on the soft tissues when the animal’s walking yes, they’re out there running, but if you look at them run, they’re not really extending their hip It’s just sort of a long for the right so their actual gait and function is not normal and they’re just compensating because they likely are uncomfortable.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, that totally makes sense. All right. This is that you broke that down really nicely. That all makes sense to me. Talk, talk to me about the total hip now. What can we do with total hip replacements that we weren’t able to do 10 years ago?
Dr. David Dycus: Yeah, we can put a total hip in the smallest of small dogs and cats all the way up to the largest of large dogs. And the interesting thing is, is years ago, we used to say, Okay, we have to use a total hip at the very end point. We got to do all these things and then do a total hip replacement. And then we would take the eight year old German Shepherd that’s had trouble for the last four years, we would put a total hip in them, and then all of a sudden this dog is out in the backyard running again, going on hikes with the owner, and the owner’s this is a new dog.
And so then we thought, Why are we making them go through all of this to give them a happy hip? And it was because we thought they’ll outlive their implants. We would have to come back and do it later, but we were basing those decisions on what they do in people, but people live 70, 80, 90 years. So what we’ve discovered is because dogs don’t live 70, 80, 90 years, we could put a hip replacement in a young dog and that hip replacement will be good for the life of the dog.
And so in the way I do this is the way I look at this. Is if I have a six or seven or eight month old dog come into me, that’s an excruciating pain. I’m sure we’ve all seen those. They’re hunched in the back. They’re extended in their hocks. They don’t want to walk. You try to move the hips. They’re screaming.
You try to get x rays. You can’t really get x rays. You put them under heavy anesthesia. You get x rays. And then it just looks like the ball of the femur has never even communicated with the acetabulum. They are in opposite territories. We call those luxoid hips. So in those dogs, what I look at is saying this dog needs a total hip now.
And so the youngest we’ve done is six, seven months of age. Ideally, the time frame would be like 10 to 12 months of age. But if I have a dog that is, say, two or three, And we’ve never seen an issue. The dog has been great and then all of a sudden comes up acutely lame And then we take x rays of the hips and the hips look bad I’m, probably not going to jump to a total hip replacement in that dog because number one, we have to remember that dogs with hip dysplasia and hip OA don’t come up acutely lame So we got to make sure they didn’t tear their cruciate ligament first but if I truly think it’s the hip then I’m going to say, okay, this dog’s had hip arthritis, but now they’re painful.
Why are they painful? likely because they’re in an arthritic flare up. So I’m going to do things to get the flare up under control. And if that’s successful, then we’re going to ride that wave. But if it’s not successful or they, have a repeat flare up kind of over and over and over rather than reinventing the wheel then we’ll say okay We’ll probably move to a hip replacement at this point. So, I sort of you know again on the total hip thing Look at the breed look at the age look at the clinical signs look at what’s been done and that’s why if I had the eight or nine month old dog with really severe hip pain.
I’m not going to do pelvic osteotomy. I’m just going to put a total hip in them because if I do a pelvic osteotomy, they might feel good, but then there’s a chance I might have to put a total hip in them when they’re four, five, six, seven years of age. And it’s why do two surgeries when we can just do one surgery?
And so that’s sort of where my thought process has gone for the surgical aspect of things, but I really think we have to look at the patient in front of us, look at the age, look at the clinical signs, look at the radiographic findings and then we also need to have a discussion with the owners as far as what expectations are, what are their financial means, you know, if an owner is strapped for cash I’m not going to say, well, let’s do an F.
H. O. I’m going to say, let’s take your funds and let’s do all these things from a conservative standpoint to get your pet more comfortable and improve range of motion and then we’ll keep doing these things. As needed, but if we hit a point where that’s not becoming effective, then we might have to say, okay, have we been able to save up over time for total hip?
If we’ve been able to throw some money into a savings account for that, or are we at a point where we need to do an FHO? But rather than doing that FHO on the front end, because I don’t want to cripple that dog, when they’re two rather than doing some other things to improve hip extension.
Because what I will say is the young dog that comes in with the acute lameness, that’s not a cruciate tear, that has hip pain, that’s in an OA flare up, we can usually get that OA flare up under control and get them right back to doing the things that they were doing before they started limping without doing an FHO.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, David. Would you be up for coming back and talking about conservative management for a hip dysplasia?
Dr. David Dycus: Yeah. Any time. Absolutely.
Dr. Andy Roark: Wow, we’re gonna make that happen. David, you’re amazing. Thank you so much for being here and walking me through this. I just, I’ve got so many notes. I came out when the total hip replacement was the, it was the last thing.
You know, it was like, oh, if all else fails, we can replace the hip. And so this is such a perspective shift. I just, it makes tons of sense. I really appreciate it. David, where can people find you online? Where can they learn more about you and what you’re up to?
Dr. David Dycus: Absolutely. So for the those on social media, my Instagram is Ortho_Vet. My Facebook is Dr. David Dycus. You can check out my website at www.drdavidycus.com. And then for the new hospital Instagram and, and Facebook are both Fusion Vet Ortho.
Dr. Andy Roark: David, thanks for being here. Guys, thanks for tuning in. Take care of yourselves, everybody. I’ll talk to you soon.
Dr. David Dycus: Thank you.
Dr. Andy Roark: And that’s what I got. Thanks to Dr. David Dycus for being here, guys. I hope you learned something. Do not worry. I got David immediately scheduled and we knocked out the episode on managing medically Hip dysplasia. And so that is going to be coming down the pipe. Stay tuned to the Conor Shane Veterinary Podcast.
I’ll probably sped it out a little bit, like I love this stuff. I’m super excited about it. I think there’s people who generally like to kind of mix things up a little bit. In the next couple of weeks I’ll drop that episode. I can go ahead and tell you right now is real good. If you enjoyed this episode, you’re going to enjoy that one and it’s coming soon.
Anyway, thanks to David for being here. Guys, if this episode was good for you, if it was helpful, please leave me an honest review wherever you get your podcasts or comments below. Text it over to your friends. Make sure the other doctors get to see it. You know, we’re always trying to help people. I just, I love making stuff like this.
I started this podcast so that I could continue to learn and boy, have I gotten a lot out of it. So anyway, gang, take care of yourselves. I’ll talk to you later on.
