Pioneering operation on paralysed panda
By Ma Lie (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-04-15 06:15

XI'AN - A giant panda with a broken back underwent an operation yesterday in Xi'an, capital of northwest Shaanxi Province.

During the two-and-a-half hour operation, vets at the Animal Experimental Centre at the Xijing Hospital, mended a broken vertebra, stabilized the spinal cord and removed sections from two further vertebra to reduce pressure on the spinal nerves.

Paralysed giant panda Kangkang receives surgery to vertebrae at Xijing Hospital in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province April 14, 2005. Doctors stabilized the panda's fractured spine but said Kangkang needs six months to a couple of years of intensive care to fully recover. [newsphoto]

Li Mingquan, chief operator and director of the Department of Orthopedics of the Xijing Hospital, said: "It is difficult to say if the panda will be able to stand properly after the operation, but we have certainly stabilized the injury and prolonged the animal's life."

Although the operation was deemed a success, vets say they will have to wait three months before they know how effective the procedure has been.

The injured panda was found on April 4 in Shaanxi Changqing State-class Nature Reserve in the Qinling Mountains, and was transferred to Xi'an on April 6, said Zhao Bin, director of Shaanxi Rare Wildlife Rescuing and Raising Research Centre, who gave the official go ahead for the operation to take place.

Experts believe that, as April is the species' peak mating season, the panda was injured by other bears while fighting over females.

After the bear was found, experts worked overnight making a careful examination of the injured panda. They found the 20-year-old bear had suffered three broken vertebra and damage to its spinal chord causing partial paralysis, said Li Liujin, professor of the Animal Experimental Centre.

"This operation has both saved the panda's life and given us invaluable experience which we can draw from in our future rescue work with other pandas," Professor Li added.

It is the first time such an operation has been carried out on a panda and experts hope they may be able to breed from the animal.

"If the reproductive organs of the injured panda are not damaged and semen can be taken out and frozen, it will provide valuable material for our artificial insemination programme," Zhao Bin said.

There are some 300 giant pandas in the Qinling Mountains where the 29,906 hectare Changqing Nature Reserve was established in 1994.

According to World Wide Fund for Nature, a survey on China's giant panda population in 2004 showed there are about 1,600 pandas living in the wild.

(China Daily 04/15/2005 page2)

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