Advanced veterinary medicine for gorillas in sanctuaries and zoos addresses cardiac disease, infectious disease, and trauma while minimizing the welfare costs of medical procedures.
Gorilla veterinary welfare encompasses both the welfare of individual animals receiving care and the broader conservation welfare implications of medical interventions in wild populations. Captive gorilla cardiac medicine — detecting and treating the cardiovascular disease that kills adult males at high rates — represents sophisticated welfare medicine that has meaningfully extended the lives of individual zoo gorillas. Wild gorilla medical intervention by Gorilla Doctors involves careful welfare assessment: the handling stress of anesthesia and treatment must be weighed against the welfare benefit of treating the condition. The training programs enabling voluntary medical cooperation in captive gorillas represent the ideal toward which all great ape veterinary care should aspire.