The Spartans welcomed a lion on campus this past weekend, but you won’t catch him with a football.
An African male lion was sent from John Ball Zoo, in Grand Rapids, to Potter Park Zoo, in Lansing, then to MSU’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital to undergo an MRI.
The 500-pound cat had experienced slowly progressive seizures for the past year, one last year and two in the last month.
The team that performed the MRI was led by Anthony Pease, head of radiology at the College of Veterinary Medicine.
“The idea was to see if we could find a cause for the seizure,” he said.
There are two different types of seizures. One that has an unknown cause and one that is a result of a tumor, stroke or other abnormalities. By performing the MRI, doctors found no signs of malformation, thus there was no need for medical intervention.
“We didn’t have to go in to surgically remove anything,” Pease said. “That means that (doctors) are free to go in and try to medically manage it.”
The lion was sent to MSU’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital as a cooperative effort between John Ball Zoo, Potter Park Zoo and the university because of the hospital’s advanced facility.
The College of Veterinary Medicine is the only veterinary school in the country with an MRI that has a high enough clearance to accommodate larger animals, such as a lion.
Pease said that many students were involved with the procedure.
“We make sure that they get exposure to this because, honestly, it’s the reason they’re here,” he said.
Veterinary medicine student Angela Lusty, along with her classmates, monitored the lion’s anesthesia levels, heart rate and blood pressure, among other things.
“That’s something that I might only get to do just once in my entire life,” she said. “I just felt really privileged to be able to help with that.”
Barb Snyder is the general curator at John Ball Zoo where they still are waiting for the results of the lion’s blood and neurology tests.
Snyder said that nothing significant enough to trigger seizures was found on the MRI, so they must wait for the results of alternative tests to come in before they can embark a new course of action.
“It’s kind of frustrating, but on the other hand, we know he doesn’t have a brain tumor,” she said. “Although we couldn’t pinpoint it, there were things we could rule out, and that was good.”
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