Are you preventing Heartworm Disease?

With spring and warmer weather upon us, mosquitoes will be making their appearance anytime. Heartworms are transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito. This is a major health concern for your pet!

Signs of heartworm disease include: coughing, difficulty breathing, panting, decreased exercise tolerance or even sudden death. Pets may not show signs until very late in the course of the disease and that is why annual blood testing is recommended.

However, heartworm disease is easily prevented with either a chewable tablet or a topical medication placed on the skin between the shoulder blades. Both types of preventative are used monthly. If you have a difficult time remembering to treat your dog monthly, we now have an injection that will last six months.

Let’s not forget our feline friends. Although cats are not the proper host for heartworms, some cats can contract the disease. Identifying cats with heartworm disease is very difficult, but the infection can be easily prevented with use of monthly and/or topical medication.

Holiday Season means delicious foods...and Pancreatitis

As the holiday season draws near, gathering with friends and family dominate many of our plans for the upcoming months. Many times, our furry family members are right there with us enjoying the festivities. But before you let your pet indulge on treats from the parties, be aware that it can put them at risk for serious consequences.

Pancreatitis commonly occurs due to increases of lipoprotein (complexes of lipid aka fats and protein) in the blood. These lipoproteins in the blood are increased when pets eat things like fatty steak, pork, bacon, greasy French fries, etc. Pancreatitis can also occur secondary to inflammation of the liver or bile duct causing lack of blood flow and trauma to the pancreas. High levels of calcium, toxins, or infectious disease can be other causes of pancreatitis. Certain breeds are affected more than others. These include the Miniature Schnauzer, Miniature Poodle, and Cocker Spaniel. The Siamese cat also seems to be at higher risk. The average age of dogs presenting with pancreatitis is 6½ years but it can happen at any age.

The gland secretes enzymes and digestive juices that help the body digest food. The pancreas also produces hormones that help regulate the glucose taken from food. Dogs typically present with gastrointestinal signs like vomiting and/or diarrhea. They can be sluggish, depressed, not want to eat, run a fever, be dehydrated, and have abdominal pain.

Diagnosis of pancreatitis often includes blood testing to rule out other organ involvement like the kidney or liver. Blood enzymes like lipase and amylase are often increased on a standard full chemistry. There is also more specific testing looking at enzymes that only come from the pancreas. Sometimes inflammation of the pancreas shows up on an x-ray but it’s just as important to rule out a foreign body in many cases.

Treatment of pancreatitis is based on controlling the signs being shown by the disease. If severe enough, it may be recommended that the pet stay hospitalized. Often times, they need fluids given either IV or under the skin. We give anti-vomiting medications by injection to calm the stomach. Pain medication is often important to keep the pet comfortable. If the pet is still vomiting or having diarrhea, we will fast the pet for 1-2 days to allow the pancreas to rest. After that time, the key is addition of small amounts of low fat food. Lean meats like drained, rinsed hamburger, chicken, or rice are good places to start. If the pet still won’t eat, sometimes we need to resort to a feeding tube to put liquid food directly into the patients stomach. Often antibiotics are included if bloodwork shows an infection or if we haven’t been able to confirm pancreatitis. Chronic or recurring pancreatitis requires long term administration of low fat food. If severe, diagnosis and complete treatment can get quite costly.

So, lets keep those pets happy and healthy over the holidays and I hope I don’t see any of you on emergency for pancreatitis.

Why do I need bloodwork before anesthesia and surgery?

So you’ve been told your pet needs surgery. For many, hearing those words brings on all kinds of emotions, fears and anxieties. Seems everyone knows someone who knows someone who has an unpleasant story to tell either human or veterinary, with regards to either anesthesia or the surgery itself. There are many kinds of surgery performed in veterinary medicine from the cosmetic bump removal to the most extensive of orthopedic reconstructions. Some veterinarians specialize in only certain surgeries, I.E. veterinary ophthalmologists and eye surgery. Others are limited to only soft tissue surgeries and yet others, only orthopedic surgery. But common to all is the need for anesthesia, a procedure by which our patients are rendered immobilized, unconscious, and free of pain and anxiety before, during, and after the procedure is performed.

Humans come in all sizes and shapes but the variability in size, body conformation, weight, and even species is far greater in the veterinary setting. To compound this even further there are species specific issues and even individual breed variabilities within a species that play a role in deciding what is the best and safest protocol for a given patient. In many instances, particularly the elderly or very sick, or severely injured patient, the anesthesia is the highest risk part of the overall surgical event. Unfortunately, we cannot always wait for the patient to get better to do their surgery as the surgery itself may be the only way to get better.

Every patient undergoing anesthesia at our hospital is given a physical exam prior to administering any anesthetic agents. This is on top of the exams that have been done in establishing the reason for surgery, either by our own doctors or the referring doctors. In addition to physical exams, preoperative bloodwork is routinely done. While the physical exam is very important, many things cannot be determined by the exam alone. Bloodwork is our means of assessing the internal functions of the animal and combined with exam, help us to choose the best, safest means of anesthesia that allows for the procedure to be completed. Like the scan tool used to diagnoses automotive problems, bloodwork can uncover issues before they are even noticed by the owner as an issue, Considering a liver could lose up to 80% of its functional ability before liver disease is seen or it may take up to up to 66-75% loss of kidney function before obvious urinary/kidney disease signs are reported, bloodwork becomes very important to the overall assessment of a patients overall health. Our goal is have the entire surgical experience be successful and this includes being able to wake up from the anesthesia and not suffer from some other disease process that the anesthesia was detrimental to. With all this said there are still some issues that exam and bloodwork are simply incapable of predicting. Allergic /hypersensitivity reactions, blood clots to name just a couple. While adverse reactions under anesthesia are uncommon, we do whatever we can to know the potential for one beforehand AND be prepared for the unknowns during. The placement of IV catheters and fluid administration during surgery is the norm to aid in maintenance of blood pressure, perfusion of vital organs with oxygen carrying blood, aid in elimination of anesthetic drugs afterwards and to provide a port for the immediate administration of emergency drugs should the need arise. In addition to all these measures, monitoring of the anesthetized patient by trained veterinary technicians and is carried out throughout the whole preoperative time.

Thankfully “problems” during anesthesia and surgery are rare thanks to the exams, tests, agents used and monitoring. But, when they do occur, being trained to recognize it early and prepared to respond to it can be the difference between a pet owner still having a successful outcome or having an unpleasant story of their own.