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The Big Cat Sanctuary<\/p>\nThe Big Cat Sanctuary<\/p>\n
Lira the lioness from The Big Cat Sanctuary undergoing critical dental surgery to remove a severely infected lower right canine tooth<\/p>\n
A three-year-old lioness rescued from war-torn Ukraine has undergone critical dental surgery to remove a severely infected canine tooth caused by an abscess. <\/p>\n
Lira arrived at The Big Cat Sanctuary in Smarden, Kent, on 14 March following a campaign by managing director Cam Whitnall, who raised \u00a3500,000 to fund her and four other rescued lions.<\/p>\n
The procedure was carried out on Friday by dentist Peter Kertesz, who has treated about 450 big cats.<\/p>\n
“When I examined Lira’s jaw and mouth, I could see immediately the broken tooth was severely infected,” said Mr Kertesz. <\/p>\n
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The Big Cat Sanctuary<\/p>\n
Amani and Lira are two of the big cats from Ukraine that arrived in March<\/p>\n
He believed the infection was caused by a trauma sustained more than a year ago, leading to bacteria producing toxins inside the tooth.<\/p>\n
“My philosophy is non-human dental problems need to be treated in the most predictable, the least invasive and safest way,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Kertesz explained as Lira did not need to catch prey, extraction was the most “sensible and ethical solution”. <\/p>\n
The sanctuary said the extracted tooth was 8cm (3.14 inches) long, with Mr Kertesz having to remove a pocket of pus from beneath the tooth and close the large wound with seven dissolving sutures. <\/p>\n
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The Big Cat Sanctuary<\/p>\n
Lira’s extracted lower right canine tooth was 8cm (3.14 inches) long<\/p>\n
He also performed a root canal treatment on the opposing upper canine tooth, which was also found to be infected.<\/p>\n
Briony Smith, curator at The Big Cat Sanctuary, said the procedure was a “complete success”. <\/p>\n
She said the staff had noticed “a small lump on Lira’s jawline” but it had been impossible to tell “the extent of the problem”.<\/p>\n
“Lira will be a little uncomfortable to begin with, but now that the toxins are out of her body, she will start to feel much better over the coming days,” added Ms Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Big Cat Sanctuary Lira the lioness from The Big Cat Sanctuary undergoing critical dental surgery to remove…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-210958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}