In human medicine, just 67% of patients follow on their surgeon’s recheck recommendations after orthopedic surgery. So, how does that compare to clients whose pets have similar surgeries? Researchers at the University of Florida Small Animal Hospital aimed to find out by searching the records of dogs and cats that had orthopedic surgery between 2017 and 2019.

Among 485 surgeries, 65% were elective and the rest were urgent. The vast majority — 93% — were performed on dogs. Similar to human patients, only about 66% of clients followed their pets’ post-op recheck recommendations. Clients were more likely to comply if their pet was a dog, if the surgery was elective and if there was more than one pet parent.

The next step is to determine ways to increase compliance so that pets can  have the best outcome possible.