Buiding a bionic mousetrap
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
In my early newspaper days in Los Angeles, I was given an unusual assignment to read the Associated Press, United Press and all the wire services for which my newspaper subscribed in search of oddities in the news. I would compile for a front-page column. It was my editor’s way of lightening up the serious news of the day.
It was a delightful assignment because it had such a strong readership. The habit of searching for those oddball stories has never left me.
I still do that search daily on an online site I have for Associated Press and would you believe I found one last Friday that would have made my front page column. It happened to Oscar, a 2 ½-year-old cat owned by Kate and Mike Nolan in the British Channel Isles. Oscar was sunning himself on the Nolan’s farm when his two rear paws were amputated by the farm’s combine harvester.
The Nolans took to him a local veterinarian, who in turn sent Oscar to Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, a neuro-orthopedic surgeon in Eashing, England. Fitzpatrick, working with biomedical engineers, fitted Oscar with two prosthetic implants. The biomedical engineers designed the artificial paws so they could be fused to bone and skin.
The veterinarians then inserted the peg-like implants by drilling them into Oscar’s ankle bones in his rear legs. The metal implants are attached to the bone where Oscar lost his paws and were coated with a substance that helps bone cells grow drectly over them. The cat’s own skin then grew over the end of the peg forming a natural seal that prevents infections.
The cat was on all four feet in less than four months after rehabilitation training that taught Oscar how to walk again. Oscar’s owners said they hoped his new paws would also further the technology for developing artificial limbs for humans.
“This is a pretty lucky cat,” said Dr. Mark Johnston, a veterinarian and spokesman for the British Small Animal Veterinary Association. “Giving a cat artificial limbs is a very novel solution.” Johnston said that while there are many “perfectly happy” three-legged cats and dogs, animals that lose two legs do not usually fare as well.
Dogs might cope better with some sort of animal-wheelchair for their back legs, but cats don’t usually adapt to that because of their freer lifestyle, he said. “If a cat has two legs that are damaged beyond repair, it’s very hard to keep him going,” he said. “We would generally euthanize a cat in that situation.”
Johnston said the next six months to a year would be critical for Oscar. He said veterinarians would have to closely monitor the feline to make sure no infections, sores or other movement problems crop up.
He doubted the technique would be widely available due to the cost and said it was still relatively rare for animals to lose two legs at once. Gordon Blunn, head of biomedical engineering at University College in London, who led the effort to make Oscar’s fake paws, said they cost about $2,996 to make, not including the cost for the operation itself.
Fitzpatrick had already made a name for himself in the animal prosthetic field when in 2008, he developed an artificial knee for a cat named Missy who was struck by a hit and run driver.
You might say, he is building a bionic mouse trap.
(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470.)