Over the past three decades, Ara Mirzaian has fitted braces for everyone from Paralympians to children with scoliosis. But Msituni was a patient like none other — a newborn giraffe.
The calf was born February 1 at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido, California, with her front limb bending the wrong way. Zoo staff feared she would die if they didn’t immediately correct the condition, which could prevent her from nursing and walking around the habitat.
But they had no experience with fitting a baby giraffe with a brace, and this proved especially challenging given she was a 178-centimetre newborn and growing taller every day.
So, they reached out to experts in orthotics at the Hanger Clinic, where Dr Mirzaian landed his very first animal patient.
“It was pretty surreal when I first heard about it,” Dr Mirzaian told The Associated Press.
“Of course, all I did was go online and study giraffes for like 24/7 until we got out here.”
Zoos are increasingly turning to medical professionals who treat people to find solutions for ailing animals, especially with prosthetics and orthotics. Earlier this year, Zoo Tampa in Florida teamed up with similar experts to successfully replace the beak of a cancer-stricken great hornbill bird with a 3D-printed prosthetic.
And in 2006, a Hanger team in Florida created a prosthetic for a bottlenose dolphin that had lost its tail after becoming tangled in ropes from a crab trap. Their story inspired the 2011 movie Dolphin Tale.
But this was a definite learning curve for all, including Matt Kinney, a senior veterinary surgeon for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance in charge of Msituni’s case.
“We commonly put on casts and bandages and stuff. But something that extensive, like this brace that she was provided, that’s something we really had to turn to our human colleagues for,” Mr Kinney said.
Msituni suffered from hyperextended carpi — wrist joint bones in giraffes' front limbs, which are more like arms. As she overcompensated, the second front limb started to hyperextend as well. Her back leg joints also were weak but were able to be corrected with specialised hoof extenders.
And given that she weighed more than 55 kilograms at birth, the abnormality was already taking its toll on her joints and bones.
Using cast mouldings of the giraffe’s legs, it took eight days to make the carbon graphite braces that featured the animal’s distinct pattern of crooked spots to match her fur.
“We put on the giraffe pattern just to make it fun,” Dr Mirzaian said. “We do this with kids all the time. They get to pick superheroes, or their favourite team and we imprint it on their bracing. So why not do it with a giraffe?”
In the end, Msituni only needed one brace. The other leg corrected itself with the medical grade brace. After 10 days in the custom brace, the problem was corrected.
All told, she was in braces for 39 days from the day she was born. After that, she was slowly introduced to her mother and others in the herd. Her mother never took her back, but another female giraffe has “adopted” her and she now runs along like the other giraffes.
Dr Mirzaian hopes to hang up a picture of the baby giraffe in her patterned brace so the kids he treats will be inspired to wear theirs.
“It was the coolest thing to see an animal like that walk in a brace,” he said. “It feels good to know we saved a giraffe’s life.”
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