Veterinarians successfully perform an unprecedented surgical intervention in Spain and save the life of an eight-month-old donkey.

The Veterinary Hospital of the University of León has successfully carried out a highly complex and unprecedented surgical intervention in Spain on a Basque breed donkey of eight months that presented a complete and displaced fracture of the metatarsus in one of its hind limbs. The severity of the injury and the need for a specialized approach led the owner of Pablete, a veterinarian and graduate of the ULE, to transport the animal from the province of Burgos to the Leonese center, as the hospital is the reference for the northwest peninsula in advanced equine surgery. The intervention, led by Débora Jorge Casado, head of the Equine Medicine and Surgery service, and Norberto González, a veterinary specialist in orthopedic surgery and traumatology, consisted of the surgical stabilization of the fracture by placing two plates and screws, a technique that allowed the bone lesion to be reduced and fixed correctly. The complexity of the fracture was compounded by the difficulty that ...