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How to perform a gastric lavage in a cat | VETgirl Veterinary CE Videos

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In today’s VETgirl online veterinary CE video, we demonstrate how to perform a gastric lavage in a cat. Note, gastric lavage is rarely done in cats, but we figured we’d show you how to do it in the rare circumstance that you might need to for your feline poisoned patient! Why don’t we gastric lavage cats more? First, cats rarely present to the veterinary clinic within a narrow enough time frame to warrant this. Also, due to their small size, it is often very difficult to productively perform gastric lavage.

This 7-year-old cat had ingested a toxic amount of Vitamin D capsules (which contain cholecalciferol). The toxic dose of cholecalciferol is > than 0.1 mg/kg. Unfortunately, at doses above this, it can result in severe hypercalcemia and secondary acute kidney injury (AKI). As this cat was thought to ingest over 100 oil capsules of the cholecalciferol (yes, hard to believe for a cat), we attempted to lavage the oil out of the stomach.

In this cat, we used low dose dexmeditomidine to induce emesis (e.g., 7 mcg/kg, IM once). Unfortunately, despite multiple attempts, this cat did not vomit. For this reason, we attempted gastric lavage. Once the cat was sedate (from the dexmetidomidine), an intravenous catheter was placed and one dose of maropitant (1 mg/kg, IV) was given to prevent emesis or secondary aspiration during gastric lavage. We used an empty syringe case as a temporary “mouth gag” to prevent the cat from biting down on the orogastric tube (which in this case was a 10 French red rubber catheter). We placed the orogastric tube directly into the center of the syringe case, and flushed a small amount of water into the tube (to ensure that the tube was not in the trachea). Often times, you’ll see the cat licking and swallowing as they sense the water going down their esophagus. I also “bolused” air directly into the tube via a 60 ml syringe while simultaneously ausculting the cat’s stomach region to listen for bubbling in the stomach; once these two methods were used to confirm correct placement of the orogastric tube, we performed several gavage cycles with 60 mls of water water each time. Unfortunately, only small amounts of brown material were seen and removed by gavage. After the stomach was emptied as much as possible, 60 mls of activated charcoal were administered via the orogastric tube. Check out our other VETgirl video on “How to administer activated charcoal to a cat” for more information.

Not sure if you’re supposed to decontaminate your veterinary patient or not? When in doubt, contact the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center (APCC) at 888.426.4435 for life-saving advice!

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