Colo to undergo risky heart tests

June 26th, 2009 • Related • Filed Under

By Kathy Lynn Gray
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium community will have a knot in its collective stomach Saturday morning as a team of doctors gathers to examine its most famous resident.

Colo, the first gorilla born in captivity and now the oldest gorilla in captivity at 52, is having a heart work-up.

In “people years,” Colo is elderly, the equivalent of an 80- or 90-year-old, and she’s been ailing off and on in recent months, said Dr. Joseph Donovan, the Columbus anesthesiologist who has treated her for at least a decade.

“I’m a little concerned,” Donovan said. “She’s lived way longer than anyone thought she could. We’re hoping everything goes fine.”

Unlike humans, gorillas have to be anesthetized for physical exams, and that’s worrisome with an animal that age, said zoo vet Dr. Michael Barrie.

“But if she’s showing any signs of disease, we could perhaps address and treat it before it becomes a problem,” he said.

At 52, Colo is the oldest gorilla in captivity. She's 80 to 90 years old in "people years."

So on Saturday, a zoo employee will tranquilize Colo with a dart while she’s in her cage. Once she’s asleep, keepers will lift her into a van and take her to the animal hospital on the zoo grounds.

She will be hooked to an IV, have a tracheal tube inserted and be put into a deeper sleep while doctors draw blood, give her vaccinations, examine her teeth and body, and take X-rays.

Cardiologist Peter George and other doctors will check her heart with a transthoracic ultrasound, much like one used on a pregnant woman. If they can’t see the heart well enough, they’ll slide a probe down her esophagus for a better look.

“We look for the same thing we’re looking for in a human heart,” George said. “If you showed someone her heart, they’d confuse it with a human heart. It’s kind of surreal.”

The tests are purely diagnostic, George said. If problems are found that surgery could correct, that would be done another time.

Colo will be put on medicine if high blood pressure or other conditions are found, Barrie said. The only medicine she’s on now is for arthritis.

The entire procedure is expected to take two or three hours.

When she is returned to her cage, she will be monitored as she wakes up, Donovan said.

It’s little wonder zoo officials are frightened by the tests. In a 12-month period starting in June 1993, four Columbus gorillas died, beginning with Oscar, Colo’s 23-year-old son, who had a heart attack a few hours after his annual physical examination.

In October that year, 17-year-old Molly died during an examination after the birth of a premature baby, who died before it was named. In May 1994, Oscar’s 6-year-old son, Colbi, died after having flulike symptoms.

Zoo director emeritus Jack Hanna said recently that he never got over Oscar’s death and that he is worried about Colo’s upcoming procedure.

After two gorillas died suddenly of heart ailments at the National Zoo in Washington in 2006, U.S. zoos started the Gorilla Health Project to study deaths and track heart disease. Ohio State University doctors are involved in the study; some results are expected this year.

Doctors hope that Colo’s tests on Saturday will identify why she has periods when she won’t eat or move around, then peps up again.

“She’s the Columbus Zoo icon, and she seems to keep on keepin’ on,” Donovan said. “There will be a lot of people there Saturday with their fingers crossed.”