Bloat: Understanding Canine GDV, Risks, and Life-Saving Treatment

How Is Bloat Treated And Why Is It Life-threatening?

A dog that keeps trying to vomit but brings nothing up is flashing a red siren. We dive straight into gastric dilatation and volvulus—better known as bloat—and explain how a twisted stomach traps gas, crushes major vessels, and sends blood pressure crashing. With clear, no-drama guidance, we share the exact steps that save lives: rapid IV fluids to stabilize circulation, careful decompression to relieve pressure, and definitive surgery to stop the twist from coming back.

We walk through the gastropexy procedure in plain English, showing why “tacking” the stomach adds a crucial third anchor point and dramatically lowers recurrence. You’ll hear how deep-chested anatomy raises risk in breeds like Great Danes, German Shepherds, Dobermans, Vizslas, Basset Hounds, and Standard Poodles—and why barrel-chested dogs are less prone. We also separate food bloat from true torsion, challenge common myths about play after meals and fast eating, and highlight the rare but real disasters of late presentation, necrosis, and even stomach rupture.

If you live with a high-risk breed, you’ll get practical, actionable advice: what early signs to watch for, when to leave home without calling ahead, and how a prophylactic gastropexy at the time of spay or neuter can prevent heartbreak later. Our goal is simple—help you recognize the problem early, move fast, and make confident decisions when every minute counts.

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To learn more about Frisco Emergency Pet Care visit:
https://www.FriscoEmergencyPetCare.com
Frisco Emergency Pet Care 
11201 Preston Road 
Frisco, Texas 75033 
469-287-6767 

Transcript

Welcome And Topic Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to the Frisco Emergency Pet Care Podcast, your trusted source for expert insight into emergency veterinary medicine. Hosted by Dr. Mike Lasasso, Chief of Staff at Frisco Emergency Pet Care, this podcast brings you essential information to help protect the health and safety of your dogs and cats. Serving North Dallas with 24-7 emergency and critical care, the team at Frisco Emergency Pet Care is here when every second counts. Now, let's begin.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Doctor, it's great to chat with you again.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Oh, it's great to be with you again, Julie. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yes, we like learning from you. Will you walk us through today's topic?

What GDV Is And Why It’s Deadly

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Why is bloat so life-threatening and how is it treated?

SPEAKER_02 1:09

So, sure. What veterinarians would refer to is gastric dilatation and volvulus, what we call GDV, the rest of the world simply calls bloat. So what happens there is that the stomach kind of turns, it people say it flips, but it rotates on its own axis. And when it when it does that, it cuts off the like when you spin a loaf of bread closed, it closes the esophagus and it also closes off the beginning of the small intestine. So now we have a stomach that is very much isolated. Nothing can go in, nothing can go out, which is why you know the clinical signs for this could be a really distended abdomen. A lot of the bloat cases I see actually don't have a great deal of abdominal distension. Um, and the reason for that is that it's really the shape of the dog. But the other clinical sign is they're trying very hard to vomit and they are dry heaving, they're retching because nothing can leave the stomach. Well, we have a stomach that's isolated, and chemically, all the bacteria, all the all the acids, everything in the stomach is still interacting. I mean, life goes on as normal, and a tremendous amount of gas is being produced that can't leave that stomach. And so the stomach gets really, really, really big. If you can imagine how how awful you felt on your most gluttonous Thanksgiving dinner, right? Um, and then amplify that that swelling by five or six times. Um, you've got a stomach that is stretched to capacity, it's putting um a great deal of pressure on all of the vessels, it's actually stopping blood return uh to a certain extent from the back of the body because now we've got this huge mass right underneath the rib cage putting pressure on all of the vessels, and these dogs are in some serious discomfort.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

And how do you treat this right away?

SPEAKER_02 3:14

So it's treated a couple of different ways. There are veterans that will still uh what we call trocar or actually insert the needle right through the wall into the stomach and relieve some of the gas distension that way.

Emergency Stabilization And Decompression

SPEAKER_02 3:27

That doesn't fix the problem, but it does definitely help with comfort level. I have largely stopped doing that for the most part. Um, unless owners have elected not to move forward with surgery and we're looking at a euthanasia situation, which which does happen quite a bit because you only have two options with GDV. You are either going to essentially go to surgery or you're gonna make a difficult decision. So I use I use that method when we're trying just to gain comfort for a short period of time. The real crux to getting GDV treated is to get them hemodynamically stable with IV fluids, get their blood pressure up, and get them anesthetized and decompress that stomach. Now, sometimes we can get that done actually before surgery. We put a tube down their mouth, down the esophagus, and if you go um gently enough, sometimes we can work through that twist and open up a communication from the stomach to the outside that decompresses the stomach and makes them feel significantly better, but it also alleviates a large part of the problem. So if you remember the movie Marley and me, this what was done for that dog is her stomach was decompressed.

Surgery And Gastropexy Explained

SPEAKER_02 4:45

But for most of us, what we also generally do as soon as that's done is we actually take them to surgery and perform a procedure that we call a gastropexy, what the rest of the world would call tacking the stomach. And what we're doing is making an additional attachment point. We're actually making an incision into the stomach wall, not all the way in, but into the wall, and an incision in the body wall. Then we're sewing those two incisions together to give this the stomach a third anchor point. It's supposed to be anchored where the esophagus comes in and where the small intestine starts, but obviously I said at the very beginning that sometimes those will flip. Well, if you've got a third point of attachment, it makes it significantly more difficult for this to recur. And if again, go back to that movie, the reason that dog perished in the end was because that tacking was never done and she re-bloated.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Oh, yeah, that was a that was a hard one to watch at the end, but adorable up until that point.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

It's really tough. There's a reason that in the in the movie industry, in films, one of the biggest rules is you never kill the dog.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

That's not supposed to happen. Outside of Marley and me and John Wick, you don't you don't see it because nobody wants to see that.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

No, no, absolutely. I'm still trying to get over Hachi in some parts. And I know that he just and that dog just passed, I believe, from being sick, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:08

He wasn't I believe so.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yes, but still too, it was too hard. It was too hard, or no, his owner passed before him, and then he kept going to the to the train station to wait for him. That was awful, okay.

Breeds At Risk And Myths About Causes

SPEAKER_02 6:21

So that the the dogs that are most at risk for this problem are going to be dogs whose conformation is very deep-chested, and by deep chested I mean their sternum or breastbone is very far away from their backbone, because that's what allows this um the stomach on the right side to swing around and end up on the on the left side. So my pit bull, really not in any danger of ever bloating because her chest is square. She's not deep-chested, she's barrel-chested. But in dogs like a a Visla, a German Shepherd, uh, the Doberman, the Great Dane, those dogs that have got really, really tall chests, these are the guys we commonly see that in. I've even seen bloat in small dogs, but those are even though they're small, they're deep-chested. So I'm talking about, I'm looking at you, uh Dachshunds and Corgies.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

And why does that happen? We hear about them eating too fast and taking an air, but it seems like there's other ways they can get bloat.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

There are lots of theories out there as to, oh, we don't we don't let them play right after they eat. Probably not a bad idea. Uh, most of them do have some food in their stomachs, um, but we really don't know what ultimately causes that. Uh, it certainly stands to reason that if they've got a reasonably full belly, not not super full, because if it is packed full of food and what we call food bloat, which is commonly confused with this condition, that's when you just simply that's your that's your Thanksgiving dinner moment, right? So the dogs that manage to get into the pantry and help themselves to their own food or or whatever the case may be. Um, but if you've got just enough food in there to give some weight and then you go and roll around on your back, I mean, lots of theories as to why it happens. Ultimately, I don't think we know. Uh, the best way to prevent it really is that pexi situation. So there are there are some veterinarians that will attack the stomach prophylactically at, say, the time of a spay because we're already in the abdomen, we're already there. It takes you know an extra 20 or 30 minutes to to actually go into a perfectly normal stomach. But if you're spaying a German Shepherd or for or a Great Dane, there are some practitioners that like to do that.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

And time-wise, how quickly are we talking about for tissue damage once the blood flow is compromised?

SPEAKER_02 8:59

It it it really depends on

Timing, Tissue Damage, And Outcomes

SPEAKER_02 9:02

really depends on severity, although they're all they're all severe. I have seen dogs um that that have been bloated owners are super aware that this problem is a potential in their pet. They come in, um, you know, it was he was normal, ate dinner, and then a couple of hours later he's trying to bring something up and can't, and they rush them right in. So I've I've taken those, especially in young dogs, you know, this three-year-old dog has been bloated for a couple of hours. Once I decompress the stomach and get in there surgically, you'd never know anything had ever happened. But I've also seen dogs that were, you know, they said, Oh, yeah, he started trying to vomit last night, and they come in 12 hours later, and we get those dogs into surgery, and the stomach is black and has totally lost its blood supply. And those uh unfortunately do not make it. I've even seen I had one case where a stomach was so necrotic and under so much pressure that it ruptured. So those are also a very difficult thing to try to come back from.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

You mentioned the large breeds that you've commonly seen for this and some of the small breeds too, like the um, I call them, you know, the doxins and the or Dashans, however one wants to prefer that, you know, call them or the Courties. But have has

Surprising Cases And Breed Statistics

SPEAKER_00 10:23

there ever been like a dog that you were surprised to see that came in for this?

SPEAKER_02 10:28

I think that the only one that was kind of surprised me, uh one of my one of my pet school classmates, her her Sharpe uh ended up bloating, and and it's not a particularly deep chested dog. Um, and in fact, at that time, because he was still so active and feeling so well and was so strong that and pulling pulling technicians down the hall, you know, with his leash, that um that the vet school insisted that the surgeons, the residents that were on at the time were like, no, there's no way this dog is bloated. And my my classmate was like, I'm telling you, there's something different about this dog. He needs x-rays, and it turns out that he was, in fact, bloated. So we do get some surprises. The the one breed that actually has the most statistical connection to GDV is actually the black male standard poodle. They are deep-chested dogs, we just don't see them. You know, we see the Labradors and the German Shepherds and the Great Danes, mostly because it's a more popular breed. That the standard poodles we don't see nearly as many of.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Oh, yeah, that's

Warning Signs And What To Do

SPEAKER_00 11:33

interesting. And then any tips for pet parents to recognize warning signs and you know, maybe just to be on the lookout because they have a breed more prone to this.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

You know, if if if you've got a breed that is that that is prone to this, and again, we're looking at looking at that distance, I'll throw basset hounds in there too. They can be uh deep chested. Um, and I actually had to do surgery on a 20 years ago, but it was about an eight-month-old German Shepherd puppy. They don't have to be old dogs, they just have to have the right the right confirmation. But if you have a dog that is prone to this condition, they've got the the anatomic setup for it, then I would just be hyper-vigilant. And if they try to vomit, and you notice that they try to vomit but aren't bringing anything up, and they do that a second time, I would put them in the car and get to your nearest emergency hospital.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Okay, well, Dr. Lasasso, thank you so much for breaking this down again. It seems like such a critical issue.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

It it for those dogs, it is absolutely referred to in emergency circles as the mother of all emergencies. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Well, we appreciate your insight, and we're excited to talk to you in the next podcast.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

All right. Thanks, Julie.

Closing And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Thank you for listening to the Frisco Emergency Pet Care Podcast. To learn more, visit FriscoPetER.com. Call 469-287-6767. Or stop by 11201 Preston Road, Frisco, Texas, 75033. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Frisco Emergency Pet Care is always here when your pet needs us most. Until next time, take care of your pets, and they'll take care of you.