Animal Eye Care is a fully equipped specialty referral hospital. Many different kinds of eye surgeries are performed, including cataract surgery, surgery for corneal ulcers and ocular trauma, eyelid surgeries (blepharoplasties), cryosurgery, and glaucoma surgeries. We particularly love our surgical mobile cart, which is made by Metro Carts and is the same cart that many human hospital ERs use. It is very adaptable and its counter space is expandable by swinging out the side units of the cart. We also love our phacoemulsification (cataract surgery) unit, which is computerized and allows precise delivery of ultrasonic power, aspiration, and diathermy modalities during surgery. Our operating microscope allows zoom magnification and fine focus of eye structures during surgery. As you can imagine, suture material for the eye is very small-- finer than a strand of human hair, and the operating microscope is essential to view both the tiny structures of the eye, and to see the suture being used by the surgeon to sew up a wound or incision. Our operating table can be elevated or lowered, and we use a special warm water circulating heating pad to keep our patients warm during surgery.

For minor surgical procedures which need low levels of magnification, the surgeon will sometimes use a lighted head loupe, which looks like a visor with a headlight on it. It has a rechargeable battery and is very mobile and adaptable to the many types of minor ocular surgeries performed.

It can sometimes be difficult to accurately position the head of the patient for major eye surgeries (the animal's nose gets in the way!), and to help with this problem, we use a vacuum positioner, which is a flat vinyl bag filled with tiny beads. The patient's head is positioned correctly, with the bag cushioning the head, and then air is evacuated from the bag, causing it to gently hold the head in whatever position we desire.

Our surgical instruments are organized into various surgical packs, depending on the type of surgery performed. There are adnexal packs (for eyelid and orbital operations), and corneal packs (for corneal surgery), and intraocular packs (for glaucoma and foreign body surgeries), and cataract packs.

Please view our section on Anesthesia, as a complement to this overview of Surgical Equipment.