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How to remove a fish hook oral foreign body | VETgirl Veterinary CE Videos

In this VETgirl video, we demonstrate how to remove a fish hook from the mouth. It’s harder than it looks, and for those of you who fish, you know. Due to the barbed – often double barbed – nature of the hook, you either have to completely cut off the barb, push the barb through more tissue so you can cut off the barb, or use pliers to destroy and crush the barb. Garret must not fish very much in urban Philadelphia, as he is using a huge wire cutter (we have much smaller fishing pliers here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes in Minnesota). Nevertheless, you can see that the hook went through the tongue and through the tissue on the mandible. By using adequate sedation, a mouth gag (for better visualization), and removal of the barb, we are easily able to remove the fish hook. Don’t forget to do a thorough oral exam to make sure there is no other injury.

Once the hook is removed, no other treatment is typically necessary aside from analgesia and short-term antibiotic therapy. Remember not to use a topical lidocaine solution, as the cat may macerate its tongue even more if the cat can’t feel it! And finally, a recent paper out of Vet Journal showed that metal spring-loaded mouth gags can cause decreased blood flow to the head and cause cortical blindness, so make sure to only use it for short-term use. (This is especially important for dentals!) And with that, another life saved…

References:

Stiles J, Weil AB, packer RA, Lantz GC. Post-anesthetic cortical blindess in cats: twenty cases. Vet J 2012;193(2):367-373.

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