Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine

Although I have never been to Cornell animal hospital, a surgeon who now works at Cornell did a wrong side surgery on my dog while at LSU on Dec. 19, 2014 that left him blind. He then left LSU animal hospital and began working at Cornell, so I’d like to let pet owners know about this incident so that they will be inspired to ask more questions. The name of the Ophthalmology surgeon is Dr. Filipe Espinheira.
On Dec. 19, 2014, my 13 year old nearly deaf weim Hotstuff underwent surgery to remove his diseased eye. A board certified Veterinary Ophthalmologist named Dr. Filipe Espinheira performed the surgery at LSU and removed Hotstuff’s only good eye by mistake, instead of his diseased eye, even though the correct eye to be removed was the only one prepped/​shaved. You can easily see in pics that there was only one eye shaved — the bad eye. However, the good «unshaved» eye was removed first.
My precious dog was left instantly blind. We still had to have the diseased eye removed as well. After surgery, my dog was lost. We exhausted every single resource available to acclimate him to his new blind life, but he still worsened, finally getting to the point that I could not even console him. I suspect he had canine cognitive disorder brought on by the instant blindness. I felt like the Hotstuff I knew was no longer here. My normally laid back dog was so stressed that he would moan constantly, would not lie down and his temp would spike. Unfortunately, I had to have Hotstuff euthanized on Jan. 14, 2015.
The sunset years that he was enjoying to the fullest were over, cut way too short because of a wrong side surgery performed by Dr. Filipe Espinheira. I was under the impression that my dog was in safe hands, but this gross negligence still occurred. I later learned that he had received his vet degree in another country, but was not licensed in any state here in the U.S.
I was offered a sum of money as a settlement for this malpractice, but it also included a non-​disparagement agreement, so I turned it down, because I wanted to be able to tell Hotstuff’s story and let pet owners know about this so that it may never happen again. If they had used some type of checklist, this could have been prevented. For more on his story and what happened, and to view before and after pictures, you can check out his Facebook page here:
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I have chosen a 3 star rating since that is considered «neutral» and I was required to choose one in order to leave my comment. I’ve never been to Cornell, but wanted to alert pet owners about this surgeon in the hopes that pet owners will ask questions, one of which is do the surgeons use checklists to prevent/​decrease surgical errors. Checklists are widespread in the human surgical world and they are coming to veterinary medicine. Please ask about checklists.

I used Cornell’s Vet Hospital when my dog had an after-​hours need for medical attention.
As I was walking through the door with my dog (who had a belly ache that I was worried about), I was greeted by a vet student who told me that they offered a «stabilization package» and estimated the cost to be $ 350.00 to 500.00. Since my dog was stable and walking in on his own, I asked them what a stabilization package would do for my dog.
The student launched into descriptions of catheters and I.V.s. I expressed concern for taking him directly into these more extreme services as my dog just appeared to have an upset stomach.
After admitting that there was not a need for this package, the vet student then begrudgingly agreed to take things «one step at a time».
During the exam (which they took my dog away to a back room to do and I was not permitted to come with him), they did an ultra-​sound, many x-​rays, and blood work.
The doctor on duty and the student came back to say that they could not find any sort of obstruction or major cause for concern. All tests came back fine.
The next part of the consultation is when it got even more strange:
They said, «because your dog is older, at this point, it’s a cancer hunt». The doctor justified this statement by saying that older dogs always get tumors and that’s what I should expect. Never mind the fact that there were no tell-​tale shadows on the ultrasound or x-​rays or any other cause for saying that. I pressed her by asking why she had ruled out a simple case of an upset stomach or even a flu bug. She said that it was a possibility, but really felt strongly that it was probably cancer.
It turns out that their x-​rays actually showed that my dog had a gas bubble in his belly and that would have been a reasonable explanation for his discomfort. The vet chose not to share that information with me — I only heard about that later when my vet received the report from Cornell.
At the end of our very long appointment, the vet strongly pressured me to leave my dog in their facility for the 30 hours that it would be until their specialist would arrive. When I asked why, I was told that an additional ultra-​sound would be helpful and if I didn’t leave him there over the weekend that I would have to wait in line again for the doctor to see him.
Luckily, my regular vet took over the care on Monday and found that my dog was in great health and really needed no further diagnostics. His gas resolved itself (like gas always does) and he was feeling himself by Monday morning.
I feel like the doctor at the Cornell hospital was just trying to add tests and really had no basis for doing so. She even said that the test results were amazingly good and would even be good for a dog half his age.
I am sad to say that I felt preyed upon by this hospital and hope that others do not experience this type of pressure to do more invasive procedures or to leave their dogs in a cage for no apparent reason.
If I can avoid this hospital again, I will do so.
Even the billing was messed up and they had to call me on Monday to add additional charges to my bill that supposedly were not added properly over the weekend.

A mixed review for the Companion Animal Hospital at Cornell’s School of Veterinary Medicine. My exotics (parrots and hamsters) received exemplary care. Dr. Simon Starkey and Dr. James Morrisey were immensely involved in the care of my pets. Both showed true concern towards their well-​being; I am forever grateful for their services. I should note that exotic pets are always seen by a DVM.
Dogs and cats, on the other hand, are only seen by students, though monitored by a DVM via video-​tape. Unfortunately, while all of the students were kind, polite, engaging, and interested, none were overly helpful in diagnosing my puppy’s excessive regurgitation of water. The general answer was «we don’t know.» Because of this experience, if I had stayed in Ithaca I would have chosen to take my dogs to Colonial, or another veterinary office where they constantly saw the same vet and had an outstanding relationship with them.