At the Henry Doorly Zoo, many animals receive special care so they stay healthy and are able to survive in the controlled environment. But it’s not every day an animal makes a trip to the Creighton Univeristy Medical Center for an X-ray.

Last week an unusual event occurred at CUMC; a sea turtle was given a CT scan in front of a team of zoo officials and radiologists. This was not the first time that an animal was given this procedure.

The sea turtle, named “Teddy,” was found in January 2008 off the coast of Florida. Weighing a little over 30 pounds, Teddy was struck by a boat, which caused internal trauma to his shell. This past February, he was transferred to Henry Doorly Zoo, and ever since he has been housed in storage tanks at the aquarium. Zookeepers have been working with him and his rehabilitation the past few months.

The internal damage to his shell made it difficult to survive in the wild. As he was starting to heal from his injuries, an air pocket started to form on the back of his shell. The buoyancy of a turtle is controlled mostly by the air in its lungs.

In order to stay afloat, turtles use their lungs to distribute air so the buoyancy can balance their shell and stay level. The air pocket formed in Teddy’s shell caused an imbalance, so ever since then he has trouble swimming and living in his natural environment. Even though sea turtles are almost always under water, they rely on oxygen to breathe.

Due to the injury to Teddy’s back, he has trouble staying balanced while swimming and has difficulty coming to the surface to breathe.

Zookeepers at the zoo debated about solutions for Teddy. Last week they were able to arrange for the animal to be taken to the hospital. Dr. Martin Goldman, radiologist at CUMC, explained the challenges in bringing the turtle in for a successful scan.

“In order to do this, we had to put a whole team together so that imaging an animal could be done appropriately and properly in a hospital environment,” Goldman said. The zoo has a continuing partnership of bringing animals to CUMC. This partnership, called Wildlife Medical Imaging Partners, was last used in a research project about tigers in the wild. Tigers were brought in for a CT scan to study their vocalization and hearing.

For Teddy’s CT scan it wasn’t necessary to put him to sleep, but there were still challenges involved. Everything had to be coordinated from hospital security, housekeeping, hospital and zoo staff to make sure the animal was transported and treated safely. Doug Armstrong, DMV, has worked with Teddy since he joined the zoo.

The primary concerns were to stabilize Teddy and get him to start eating well in his new environment. To try to combat the buoyancy problem, Armstrong and his team first tried to balance the turtle by gluing weights to its shell to even out the imbalance. This technique was unsuccessful, which lead to the CT scan at CUMC. The hospital put forth great effort to be able to accomodate Teddy, lead by CEO Gary Honts.

“The purpose of the CT scan was to try to get a better sense of why the animal had this buoyancy problem and provide guidance with regard to the best approach to the problem for the animal,” Armstrong said.

The results of Teddy’s CT scan are still pending, but it represents a great leap in medical technology for animals. “The hospital and zoo put forth a lot of resources to make this a successful collaboration,” Goldman said.

Armstrong said Teddy will not be able to be on display for several months, but if this scan is successful, then it will be one step closer to making its debut at the zoo.