Ongoing Research at the Royal Veterinary College

Tom Cardy, BSc, BVetMed, PhD, MRCVS, a lecturer in veterinary neurology and neurosurgery at Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London, England, explains some of the research and teaching methods being studied at RVC.

“I guess at the RVC we have a broad base research strategy. In the group at the minute, we're focusing a lot on seizures, epilepsy. We're focusing on vertebral malformations in different breeds of dogs, particularly brachycephalic, like your French bulldog, your English bulldog, your pug. We're also trying to move into understanding why tumors affect the brain in the way they do and how they can potentially cause seizures. And so, we're starting to build up a brain bank of dog brains—some with brain tumors some without brain tumors. And what we're going to do is just analyze that environment around the tumor within the brain and see how the tumor has changed that to produce those neurological signs and cause that animal to have seizures. So that's one kind of area of research.

The other thing which I think everyone's getting into at the minute is 3D printing. We use 3D printing for anatomy teaching, for surgical planning, and we're now also using it through a colleague to try and create implant guides. So, for example, if I'm stabilizing a neck in a very small dog the margins for error are tiny, but by using these printed drill guides we've found that we have much higher rates of success.”