Emergency MRI Reveals ANNPE: Kali’s Rapid Road to Recovery
The day before New Year’s Eve, Kali, a sweet 4-year-old mixed-breed dog, experienced a sudden, scary injury while playing outside. In an instant, she cried out and collapsed — suddenly unable to use her back legs
An emergency MRI revealed the cause immediately. Kali had an Acute Non-Compressive Nucleus Pulposus Extrusion (ANNPE) at T12-13 — otherwise known as a traumatic disk. ANNPE, or traumatic disk, is a condition where a tiny piece of normal, hydrated disk material 'explosively' ruptures into the spinal canal.
This small fragment violently passes through the spinal cord and disrupts the blood supply, causing severe neurological dysfunction. Critically, this is a vascular process — the disk material does not significantly compress the spinal cord — meaning that in most cases surgery isn’t necessary.
Kali’s back is illustrated on the left by an MRI image (A), revealing an intradural spinal cord defect (light blue arrow) that aligns with a small area of hemorrhage situated within the spinal cord. The image (B) on the right is a cross-section MRI at T12-3, which clearly shows a defect within the spinal cord representing the hemorrhage, swelling, and bruising from the tiny disk passing through the spinal cord. There is no compression from this ANNPE.
Although her condition was initially alarming to Kali’s parents, we assured them that ANNPE is typically non-progressive after the initial 24-48 hours and no surgery was required. Most importantly, this condition isn’t painful, so Kali wasn’t experiencing discomfort beyond her loss of mobility.
Our treatment recommendations focused on supportive care at home to prevent Kali from injuring herself during recovery. This included:
Confining her in a soft, comfortable bed when unsupervised.
Providing support when she needed to urinate or defecate, if necessary.
Watching closely for any urinary tract infections (UTIs), as these complications can develop when pets cannot completely empty their bladder.
Rehabilitation exercises as she recovers.
Kali’s made awesome improvement at home. After just two weeks, she is back to her independent self, and increasingly able to and eager to do more. After 1 month — just look at Kali’s transformation! She is back to zooming around in the snow.
“We are thankful that Dr. Jay was on-call that weekend. We were worried sick about Kali, and he gave her all the attention and resources. We had so many questions, and he answered every one. If any dog has a neurological emergency, we’d recommend VNIoC 100%–they’re a 10 out of 10!
–Jordan T., Kali’s “Pawrent”