What do you do when a rhino breaks a leg? Call a horse doctor, of course

Dr. David Stack sometimes can't believe that just six months ago, he performed what's believed to be a first-of-its kind leg surgery on a rhinoceros.

Stack, a veterinary surgeon, led the team that conducted keyhole surgery to repair a white rhino's fractured leg near Liverpool, England. 

"Myself and my wife were driving about two weeks ago and, just suddenly, the penny dropped, and I went: 'How did we do that? That was crazy,"' the veterinary surgeon told As It Happens host Nil Koksal.

The reason it's so mind-boggling is that, as far as he's aware, nobody has ever done this kind of procedure before.

And also, because he's a horse doctor. 

Stack is a senior lecturer in equine surgery at the University of Liverpool. He's also the husband of a conservation scientist and welfare consultant at Knowsley Safari, a zoo in Prescot, England.

So when Amara the notoriously playful two-year-old rhino hurt her leg during a round of roughhousing with another rhinoceros, he was among the first to know about it.

"She's quite a boisterous youngster and used to — well, still does — like getting herself into trouble," Stack said.

When staff at Knowsley saw how serious Amara's injury was, they contacted the university for help with diagnostics. 

"We're kind of used to being thrown curveballs in the hospital," Stack said, adding they've also worked with cattle, alpacas, sheep and goats. "We tend to say yes."

The team administered X-rays on Amara and found a nasty fracture on part of her front leg that Stack describes as the "anatomical equivalent of her wrist."

A piece of bone about "the size of a walnut" had broken off and was lodged in her joint, he said, causing huge amounts of swelling. 

"Once we had identified this fracture, the real challenge then was how do we manage this?" Stack said. "These things became complicated because, you know, we couldn't find anybody really, who had had experience treating anything like it."

Staff from the university and the zoo pored through the available medical literature, and found no examples of a rhino with this particular injury.