Ultrasonographic hunt for the stray surgical swab
This is a slightly unusual sonographic situation -a missing swab in the count up after abdominal surgery. Not quite the same as the usual scenario where swabs weren’t counted and the symptomatic patient then presents for imaging some months later.
In this dog, 2 days post-op there is very little in the way of reaction or fluid around the swab which was tucked away behind the right kidney. If you didn’t know there might be a swab in there it would be easy to mistake this shadowing for a piece of colon at a casual glance. Obviously it doesn’t have gut wall delineating the near edge.
