How to Talk About Pet Obesity With Your Veterinary ClientsMarch 16, 2016Obesity can lead to a range of medical conditions for pets if not addressed properly, but even with the possibility of dire consequences, many vets still struggle to effectively address obesity with clients. Pet obesity is rapidly becoming an epidemic; an estimated 54 percent of pets in the United States are obese. The result is millions of pets with diabetes, joint pain and even organ failure. In fact, according to a 2014 study from Association for Pet Obesity Prevention found that: “Out of 1,421 animals put to a veterinary assessment last fall, 57.6 percent of cats and 52.6 percent of dogs were classified as overweight or obese. Owners of the obese pets overwhelmingly considered their cat or dog to be of normal weight.” Fortunately, more effective communication with your veterinary clients can make a big difference. Avoid Using the Word “Obese” According to Wendy Myers, owner of Communications Solutions for Veterinarians many of her clients worry about having the conversation because their clients are also obese, but they’re not helping their clients or the pets that way. Instead, she suggests making it about the medical …
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Veterinarian Saves Puppy That Weighed Only Half a PoundMarch 16, 2016March 1, 2016 marked the day that a 0.5-pound female puppy was brought into the San Jose Animal Care Center in Calif. She was cold to the touch, had pale to gray gums and was barely responsive. She was hypothermic, hypoglycemic and dehydrated. Unfortunately, without the puppy’s mother to provide warmth and frequent feedings, the puppy’s likelihood of survival was slim. Sharon Ostermann, DVM and the rest of the veterinary team feared the puppy wouldn’t even live another half hour. In her Tails of a Shelter Vet blog, Dr. Ostermann wrote that she and the veterinary team gave the puppy heat support and prepared an intraosseous catheter. The team, however, had never done one before and didn’t have the specific medical supplies needed for one. Instead, they used a spinal needle as a catheter. “The area over the puppy’s left hip was shaved, a local anesthetic was injected into the area, and the skin was scrubbed as if prepping for surgery. The needle was placed into the femur, and it was determined to be in the correct position.” Tales of a shelter vet The veterinary team ensured the correct placement of the intraosseous catheter. …
How a Misplaced Sponge Can Return to Bite YouMarch 15, 2016Forgetting a surgical sponge inside a veterinary patient is a taboo yet all-too-common situation. Because of blatant underreporting, reliable statistics do not exist in veterinary surgery, and few are available in human surgery. Sponge retention is a risk any time sponges are used in surgery, regardless of the procedure. Since retained sponges were first described in human surgery in 1884, they remain the most common accidentally retained surgical foreign bodies. This can lead to many complications after surgery, not to mention the potential of resulting medicolegal implications. Understanding the reasons for sponge retention can help you devise strategies to avoid this embarrassing pitfall. Small sponges, especially when soaked in blood, can be difficult to see in the surgical field. Not discarding used sponges immediately increases this risk. In deeper surgical areas, such as thoracic or abdominal body cavities, the use of small sponges creates an unnecessary risk of retention because they easily may become lost in the process. Also, using free small sponges without first attaching them to a hemostat or sponge forceps increases this risk. Phil Zeltzman, DVM, DACVS, CVJ A retained lap sponge attached to …
Veterinarian Creates Way to Make Senior Dogs’ Lives a Little EasierMarch 7, 2016Clients with senior dogs may come in to your veterinary office with a host of complaints. Their senior dog has trouble eating or getting up and down stairs. Maybe their senior dog needs help standing up or isn’t as active as he once was. Perhaps their senior dog can’t grip the floor as easily as he could when he was younger and is now prone to slipping. That was the complaint Julie Buzby, DVM found in her practice. She has been a practicing veterinarian for 19 years, but earlier in her career, she became certified in veterinary acupuncture and chiropractic. Due to that, she started seeing more geriatric dogs than she normally might have. “Most of the senior dogs I treated were improving with medications, herbs, supplements, and alternative therapies,” Buzby said on Dogster.com, “but my clients worried about their dogs slipping on the floors at home. I understood their frustration.” After opening her own clinic and then selling it in 2008, she moved with her family to South Carolina where she works in a veterinary clinic part-time. It was there, at an annual open house in 2011, that the idea for a product that would …
NCSU Veterinarians, Duke Doctors Join Forces to Fight CancerMarch 4, 2016Cancer is a terrible disease. We’ve all been affected by it either personally or through someone we know (I just lost my aunt to cancer two weeks ago). It seems that it’s more and more prevalent nowadays, not only affecting our human loved ones, but our animals as well. Chances are you’ve treated some of those animals who were (or are) afflicted with cancer. Some have survived; some haven’t. When they do, it’s often deemed a miracle. One such miracle came in the form of a 13-year-old Labrador Retriever named Eliza almost one and a half years ago. She was placed in a clinical trial at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine after a diagnosis of nose and mouth cancer, The News & Observer reports. Her symptoms started with a swollen snout, before she began bleeding from her mouth. The veterinarian informed Eliza’s owner, Lynne Murchison, that the Lab had about five weeks to live. At most. Unwilling to give up, Murchison searched for — and found — a clinical trial at NCSU’s vet school. It was for oral tumors. According to The News …
Veterinarian Proves It: Cats See Better in the DarkMarch 3, 2016No surprises here: Cats see way better in the dark. But Liz Bonnin, host of the BBC show “Cats v Dogs: Which is Best?” wanted to find out how much better they could see, and put together a test with the help of a local veterinary college. Bonnin went to the Royal Veterinary College in the United Kingdom to talk to Rich F. Sanchez, DVM, CertVOphthal, DipECVO, FHEA, MRCVS. Dr. Sanchez is a senior ophthalmologist and a Lecturer of the Ophthalmology Service at the college. He created a maze for his test subjects — a dog named Fen and a cat named Oedipus — that they would have to navigate in complete darkness. Once they reach the end, they get a food reward. It ends up taking Fen 43 seconds to get through the maze, being guided by the voice of his owners. Oediupus, however, takes 5 seconds. Watch it here: You may know why cats see so well in the dark, but do your clients? Give them this fun tidbit from the Catster.com article, “Four Cool Facts About Your Cat’s Eyes:” Our feline friends can see well …
Veterinary Dentist Starts ‘Tooth Fairy Fund’ for Pets Needing Dental WorkFebruary 25, 2016February is National Pet Dental Health Month. It’s the perfect time to inform clients of the importance of keeping their pets’ teeth healthy. You may have come across a client or two (or perhaps dozens) who say they can’t afford the dental care their pets need. Enter Brook Niemiec, DVM, DAVDC. Dr. Niemiec, who owns Southern California Veterinary Dental Specialties and Oral Surgery in San Diego, Calif., understands the disconnect between dental care for pets and shelter animals and the money to pay for it. To combat that disconnect, Niemiec set up the Tooth Fairy Fund. It was designed to help those who cannot afford dental care for their pets. Fox 5 San Diego reports that last December the Tooth Fairy Fund helped pay for the dental care of several shelter animals that had serious dental issues. The program is designed so that veterinarians nationwide can implement it in their practices. Niemiec told Fox 5 San Diego that $1 for every tooth extracted in any of the practices participating in the Tooth Fairy Fund is donated to the program. The money raised for Tooth Fairy Fund covers dental surgery and anesthesia.
Study: Many Shelter Dogs Mislabeled as ‘Pit Bull’February 18, 2016Many shelter dogs are often mistakenly labeled as a pit bull, according to a new study by the University of Florida. The study, which was recently published in The Veterinary Journal, identified the inaccuracies through DNA testing. “Animal shelter staff and veterinarians are frequently expected to guess the breed of dogs based on appearance alone,” said Julie Levy, DVM, Ph.D., a professor of shelter medicine at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine and lead author of the study. “Unlike many other things people can’t quite define but ‘know when they see it,’ identification of dogs as pit bulls can trigger an array of negative consequences, from the loss of housing, to being seized by animal control, to the taking of the dog’s life. In the high-stakes world of animal shelters, a dog’s life might depend on a potential adopter’s momentary glimpse and assumptions about its suitability as a pet. If the shelter staff has labeled the dog as a pit bull, its chances for adoption automatically go down in many shelters.” The past few decades have brought an increase in ownership restrictions on breeds including pit bulls and …
Veterinarian Comforts Dog by Eating Breakfast with Her in Her CageFebruary 17, 2016Andy Mathis, DVM, runs Granite Hills Animal Care in Elberton, Ga. Just like other veterinarians, he treats many animals. While most of his (and your) patients are likely pets, the occasional stray comes in. For Mathis, that stray came in the form of a female pit bull. Dubbed Graycie, the dog was “emaciated, starved (20 pounds), dehydrated, hypothermic (temperature of 95), anemic… with a vaginal prolapse,” the Granite Hills Facebook page states. Mathis first considered euthanizing Graycie, but wanted to give her a chance, with the encouragement of friends and Facebook fans. He took her to the veterinary teaching hospital at the University of Georgia. Their treatment resulted in improvement of her temperature, rehydration and the temporary reduction of her prolapse. A urinary catheter was also put in place. Graycie returned to Mathis’s care a couple days later. From February 1 through 8, she ate on her own, gained some weight and her blood levels improved. Her urinary catheter was removed on February 8 and the following Thursday Mathis spayed her. Mathis wrote in the Facebook post that Graycie hasn’t been eating comfortably, so he’s taken to eating his breakfast with her in …
What to do When Gums Overgrow Their BoundariesFebruary 8, 2016A 5-year-old male Rhodesian ridgeback presented to me for evaluation of proliferative gingival enlargement over the maxillary canine teeth. Historically, the owner noted a flap of partially detached gingiva over tooth 104, which had since become completely detached, resulting in the unique combination of gingival recession over most of the lateral portion of the tooth and gingival enlargement over the mesial, distal and palatal surfaces of the tooth (Figure 1). John Lewis, VMD, FAVD, Dipl. AVDC Figure 1: The right maxillary quadrant showing generalized gingival hyperplasia and gingival recession over the labial (vestibular) surface of the right maxillary canine tooth (tooth 104). Tooth 204 had a similar appearance, though more irregular, with a large circumscribed area of enlargement toward the distal portion of the crown (Figure 2). Nearly every tooth in the mouth was affected at least mildly by gingival enlargement, though the canines and incisors were affected most severely (Figure 3). The appearance of the gingiva over teeth 104 and 204 likely was due to the following events: Gingival enlargement results in pseudopockets. Pseudopockets allow for hair, plaque and debris to be trapped …
