Animal E.R.

The patient, Fingers, doesn't look so great. His usual bright-green skin has turned a queasy orange. His muscles twitch and he's got a killer stomachache.

Fingers is a pet iguana who has an unhealthy habit of gulping down nails, screws, and coins. But he's not exactly on his deathbed. There's an entire exotic animals unit just for him and his scaly kin at the Animal Medical Center (AMC), New York's largest veterinary hospital. There, doctors will anesthetize Fingers (make him unconscious) and place him on an operating table. Then they'll open his reptilian stomach and fish out a quarter, nickel, and penny. After a nap in post-op, Fingers will be as good as new.

BOAS BENEFIT TOO

These days, it's no big deal to see cats undergoing kidney transplants. dogs getting dental work, and boa constrictors enduring cancer surgery. In fact, nearly every procedure surgeons perform on humans can be done on animals. Veterinarians operate in sterile conditions, hook up IV bags. even give blood transfusions (humans have four blood types; dogs have 13). One difference, however, is the post-op area: At the AMC, animals lie on a floor pad under heat lamps, whimpering as they wake up from anesthesia.

ONLY NINE LIVES?

In the past, veterinarians practiced euthanasia (pronounced you-the-NAY-zah) on animals that were very sick or in great pain; that is, they would humanely end animals' lives by injection with a lethal drug. But vets can now lengthen animals' lives with drugs and surgery. "Eight used to be old for a cat. Now 18 is not unusual," says Michael Garvey, a vet at the AMC.

Just like people, however, many older animals are prone to painful and life-threatening diseases. For example, 26-year-old Hsing Hsing, the giant panda at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., takes medicine for arthritis in his legs. Hsing Hsing also underwent cancer surgery recently. His doctors report that he has recovered perfectly.

"Zoo animals did not ask to be placed in captivity," says Manuel Mollinedo, director of the Los Angeles Zoo. "It's important for us to make their lives as comfortable as we possibly can."

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO?

But is the effort -- and money -- spent to heal animals worth it? One family in New York shelled out $10,000 to repair their Labrador retriever's ruined kidneys after the dog slurped antifreeze. And Ronald Hotz of Millbury, Ohio, regularly drives three hours so his dog, Jasmine, can be treated by a veterinarian who uses acupuncture, an ancient Chinese medical technique.

Hotz says the treatment is working, and he thinks it's worth it: Jasmine's allergies were so awful she had lost her fur. "Like a hairless Chihuahua," he says sadly. "She was miserable and I wouldn't give up."

Sometimes pets undergo operations not even available to humans. Is ordering up expensive animal surgery the right thing to do in every case? Read the following three profiles and the debate between other Science World readers. Then decide for yourself.

PATIENT: MUFFIN, A KOMODO DRAGON

You may know an older person who has trouble seeing. But lizards? You bet. After all, this 25-year-old resident of the National Zoo is no spring chicken. Muffin developed a cataract, or cloudy lens, in her right eye.

The lens lies behind the pupil, the dark circle in the center of the eye, and helps us focus on images. As people and animals age, their lenses become less flexible and less transparent. Sometimes lenses turn milky, making it impossible to see.

Even with one good eye, Muffin was still able to find her food and patrol her zoo exhibit. But her vets were worried she would develop cataracts in both eyes. They decided to operate.

"First, I made a tiny cut in the cornea, the clear covering over the eyeball, and in the lens," says Seth Koch, the vet who operated on Muffin. Then he inserted a slender rod that bounced high-speed sound waves into the lens, breaking it into tiny pieces. Finally, he sucked up the lens pieces with a tiny vacuum in the rod. "It's like mashing a potato and sucking it up with a straw," says Koch.

Muffin's eye healed in two weeks. Her vision is back, though blurry. "She's much more active now," says Lucy Spelman, a vet at the National Zoo. "We thought she was quiet because of old age. Now we think it was because she couldn't see well!"

PATIENT: LICKETY SPLIT, A RACEHORSE 

What does Lickety Split (not the horse's real name; his owners prefer to keep him anonymous) have in common with Buffalo Bills defensive end Bruce Smith? Both are athletes whose knees were saved by a new type of operation.

Racehorses and football players do a lot of running, which takes its toll on joints, the places where bones connect with one another. Constant running or one bad fall can damage a knee so that the cartilage (the rubbery tissue that cushions joints) wears away. That leaves bare bone scraping against bare bone. And cartilage can't grow back on its own.

Lucky for Lickety, the National Football League is funding knee research for horses. Sports doctors hope to learn more about human knees by studying horses that undergo similar stress.

Lickety's doctors used a pointy tool called an awl to tap tiny holes in the bones of his knees. The holes reached through to the marrow inside the bones. Blood and young cartilage cells in the marrow were then able to travel through the holes to Lickety's tom knee tissue. The new cartilage cells helped the horse's knees to mend.

PATIENT: TWIGGY, A DACHSHUND 

When 14-year-old Travis Davis bent over to pet his dachshund one morning, the dog squealed -- but not from happiness. "She couldn't get up," Travis says. "When she tried to walk, she dragged her back legs."

A disk in Twiggy's spine had burst. Disks are fluid-filled sacs sandwiched between each pair of vertebrae (spinal bones.) The burst liquid pushed on Twiggy's spinal cord and cut her nerves.

But spinal nerves can't grow back together on their own -- the scar tissue is too tough. So doctors implanted a battery near Twiggy's spinal injury. The battery sent a current of electricity through the scar. Electric current encourages nerves to grow, and Twiggy's nerves began to regenerate.

For a few days after surgery, Twiggy used a "wheelchair." Within a few weeks, however, Twiggy was hotdogging around on her own.