The clinic possesses flexible video endoscopes for the imaging of the digestive tract and the respiratory tract, as well as a number of rigid endoscopes for the nose, ear, urethral and urinary bladder endoscopy as well as arthroscopy.
The endoscopy of hollow organs enables direct insight into the corresponding organ and can be performed only in patients under anesthesia. Thus, many primarily chronic stomach and intestinal disorders, which can be accompanied by vomiting and/or diarrhea, can be diagnosed using only this examination procedure.
In most cases, in addition to the visual assessment through a working channel of the endoscope using special forceps, small mucous membrane samples are taken from the examined organs. These are examined by specialized pathologists and on the basis of these results a specific treatment is introduced. Swallowed foreign bodies, which remain in the esophagus or which can stay in the stomach, are removed in many cases using endoscopy, whereby expensive operations can be avoided for the patients.
Furthermore, diagnosis is not possible in the respiratory tract (nose, trachea, bronchial tubes) without reflection and relevant sample collection, especially in case of chronic diseases, which are accompanied, for example, by nasal discharge or coughing.
For some diseases of the external ear canal, eardrums as well as the middle ear, examination is not possible using “normal” ear funnels. The problem is mainly related to long ear canals in large breeds or also to ear canals that have been narrowed by long-term inflammations. In this case, the endoscope, due to its length and its small diameter, can be very helpful during assessment and also rinsing treatment.
In cases of doubt, endoscopy can help identify and diagnose inflammations of tumors in urinary tracts or also anatomical malformations, which, for example, lead to urinary incontinence.
The imaging of joints as part of the so-called arthroscopy method facilitates less-traumatic diagnostics and also therapy in specific cases.