Bizarre Meals Cost Pet Owners Plenty in Vet BillsMay 19, 2015Rocks, balls and even rugs have ended up inside dogs, cats and other pets, sometimes with deadly results. The Trupanion pet health insurance company calculated that pets that swallow a foreign object cost their owners hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in veterinary bills to retrieve the item. And the farther a sock or knife—yes, it happens—moves, the more difficult its removal can be. “Some objects can pass uneventfully with supervision, but the longer pet owners wait, the more dangerous—and costly—foreign body ingestion can become,” said Kerri Marshall, DVM, the Seattle company’s chief veterinary officer. “As the object travels further along the gastrointestinal tract, the opportunity for complications increase and the cost to remove the object often increases along with it.” Trupanion, combing its records, reported that removing ingested objects is the second most common insurance claim from dog owners and the third most common among cat owners. The company, whose policies cover up to 90 percent of veterinary costs, paid out more than $1.8 million in 2014 in such cases. The cheapest and easiest removals tend to be for objects lodged in an animal’s mouth. The average cost, according to Trupanion, is $370, with a range of …
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Salmonella Outbreak Tied to Crested GeckosMay 19, 2015U.S. public health officials are urging gecko owners to use common sense rather than get rid of their pet after 20 people nationwide were infected with salmonella. The strain, Salmonella Muenchen, has been linked to contact with crested geckos purchased at pet stores in different states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week. Over the past 17 months, 20 people contracted the bacterial strain. Two cases each were reported in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin and single cases in Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Tennessee and Virginia. None of the sickened people, ranging in age from 57 to less than 1, died. Three needed to be hospitalized, CDC stated. “The pet industry is working closely with CDC to determine the source of the crested geckos linked to this outbreak in order to prevent additional illnesses,” the agency noted. CDC is teaming up with veterinary and agriculture officials on the investigation. The agency issued the following tips: Wash hands thoroughly with soap and water after handling reptiles and their habitats, food or equipment. Children younger than 5, people with weakened immune systems and adults older than 65 are at higher risk …
Penn Vet Creates Executive Director of the Office of Students PositionMay 19, 2015The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine (Penn Vet) has named Mary Bryant, VMD, as executive director of the office of students. In this newly created position, Dr. Bryant will oversee the recently consolidated Office of Admissions and the Office of Student and Curricular Affairs. She will be responsible for recruiting promising new students to Penn Vet and overseeing the welfare and needs of the students during their years on campus. “It is very important to me to continue enrolling the most qualified and diverse students,” Bryant said. “As an alumna and adjunct professor, I have a long history of engagement with Penn Vet. I am really looking forward to working closely with the students to ensure they have the best possible experience here and can look back on their years at Penn Vet as I do: as the best educational experience I ever had. I loved my student years at Penn.” Before joining Penn Vet, Bryant worked for Merial of Duluth, Ga., in Field Veterinary Services, first as a technical services veterinarian, and then as northeast regional director. Bryant has been an adjunct professor at Penn Vet for 14 years, teaching a professional development elective to third-year …
WSAVA Focuses on Stopping Pain in AnimalsMay 18, 2015A 59-page document that outlines pain management protocols for a wide range of patients—from dogs with degenerative joint disease to cats suffering from cancer—is winning the endorsement of veterinary organizations worldwide. The World Small Animal Veterinary Association’s Global Pain Council last week unveiled the “Guidelines for the Recognition, Assessment and Management of Pain” and urged WSAVA’s 92 member associations to support the document’s recommendations. Several dozen representatives did so at the start of WSAVA’s World Congress, raising to 48 the total number to organizations backing the guidelines. Managing pain effectively was the theme of the 2015 World Congress, which drew more than 4,000 people to Bangkok and wrapped up today. The organization’s president-elect, Walt Ingwersen, DVM, DVSc, Dipl. ACVIM, stressed the importance of what the Global Pain Council accomplished. “There is a wide variation in pain assessment and management around the world and we must work together to eliminate this variation because the ability to actually diagnose pain is certainly not dependent on regional differences and is a skill we all share,” Dr. Ingwersen said. The guidelines may be downloaded at http://bit.ly/1HqwviD. Among the 92 member organizations is the American Veterinary Medical Association, whose
LifeLearn’s ‘Dr. Sofie’ Aims to Know All the AnswersMay 15, 2015Type “congestive,” “heart failure” and “cat” into a Google search engine and nearly 450,000 results pop up. Where does a veterinarian start clicking and which sources should she trust? But ask Sofie, “What are the best treatments for congestive heart failure in a cat?” and the computer program returns what co-developer LifeLearn Inc. said are precise, evidence-based answers pulled from the Canadian company’s expansive database as well as from expert sources such as publishers Elsevier, Merck and Wiley and organizations like VetFolio. Based on IBM Corp.’s Watson cognitive computing platform—remember Watson’s demolishing of “Jeopardy” show champions in 2011?—Sofie was constructed to understand natural human language rather than rely on keywords. The results it spills out through a password-protected website come from hundreds of thousands of pages of veterinary resources. In beta testing for months, Sofie was rolled out publicly earlier this year. The technology industry took notice in January when Sofie was awarded two Everyday Health Awards for Innovation during the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Aberdeen Veterinary Clinic in Aberdeen, Md., was the first veterinary clinic to use Sofie. “Instead of pulling out a few different texts and having them on my desk, I just have a …
UC Davis Gives Cat New EyelidsMay 15, 2015Practice made perfect for UC Davis veterinary ophthalmologists, who after performing a rare transplant on feline cadavers were able to construct upper eyelids on a cat born without them. The surgery, called lip commissure to eyelid transposition, was successfully performed on a 9-month-old female domestic shorthair named Billie, who suffered from a congenital defect known as eyelid agenesis. The condition was a source of constant discomfort as hair around Billie’s eyes rubbed against the corneas, according to the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine. The absence of eyelids also prevented Billie from blinking and lubricating her eyes. A surgery team made up of Ophthalmology Service veterinarians Ann Strom, DVM, MS, and Lionel Sebbag, DVM, knew about a procedure never tried before at UC Davis but documented in the journal Veterinary Ophthalmology in 2010. Drs. Strom and Sebbag practiced removing tissue from the cadavers’ cheeks and lips and transplanting it as an eyelid, the university stated. Once confident in their ability, the surgeons consulted with Billie’s owner, who gave the go-ahead for the transplant. Billie’s tissue grafts showed no signs of rejection or infection at one- and two-week checkups. After two months, the new eyelids were taking …
Drug Developer Jaguar Raises Millions in IPOMay 14, 2015Jaguar Animal Health Inc. launched an initial public offering Wednesday with the intention of generating millions of dollars to fund clinical studies of proposed gastrointestinal drugs for pets and livestock. The young San Francisco company sold 2.86 million shares of common stock at $7 each. The first day of trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol JAGX ended with the stock down slightly, to $6.78. Jaguar expects to spend some of the $15.1 million in net proceeds on studying and winning regulatory approval of Canalevia, a drug formulated to fight chemotherapy-induced diarrhea and watery diarrhea in dogs, the company stated in its prospectus. Money also is earmarked for the development of species-specific formulations of crofelemer to treat watery diarrhea in cats, acute colitis in horses, and gastric and colonic ulcers in horses. Crofelemer, an antidiarrheal isolated from the Croton lechleri tree, is used in Canalevia. Farther down the product pipeline are prescription drugs to treat feline herpes virus, obesity-related metabolic dysfunction in dogs, metabolic syndrome in horses and Type II diabetes in cats. The company's has one product on the market: the over-the-counter medication Neonorm Calf, a treatment for watery diarrhea, or scours, in preweaned …
Petplan Looking for Best in Veterinary FieldMay 14, 2015Petplan is paying for the names of some very good men, women and veterinary hospitals. The Philadelphia pet health insurance company is collecting nominees for the 2016 Veterinary Awards, which will be handed out in January during the North American Veterinary Community conference in Orlando, Fla. For each nomination—up to 10,000—Petplan will donate $1 to one of three charities: Adopt-a-Pet.com, GreaterGood.org or Morris Animal Foundation. Nominations in the fifth annual contest are being taken at www.gopetplan.com/vet-awards. The deadline is Sept. 27. The candidates will be cut to six semifinalists in five categories: Practice of the Year, Veterinarian of the Year, Veterinary Technician of the Year, Practice Manager of the Year and Receptionist of the Year. Three semifinalists will be chosen for Pet Parent of the Year. Public online voting will take place from Sept. 29 to Oct. 12. The results will be combined with the decisions of judging panels to identify the finalists, one of whom will be honored in each category in Orlando.
CSU Treats Rescued African LionMay 14, 2015Veterinarians from Colorado State University James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital recently evaluated a 15-year-old African lion named Guero for neck injuries and damaged teeth. Veterinary professionals from neurology, exotic animal medicine, small animal surgery, anesthesiology and dentistry collaborated to diagnose his injuries and provide a treatment plan for the 345-pound lion. “With patients like this, it often takes a hospital to treat a patient,” said Terry Campbell, DVM, Ph.D., who specializes in exotic animal medicine. “That’s why CSU is perfect for cases like this, because we have so much expertise in a variety of medical specialties.” Not much is known of Guero’s past, except that he had been surrendered by his owner to an animal rescue organization in Pachuca, Mexico. On April 24, Guero was airlifted to the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, Colo., a place where he will now call home. “We think Guero broke his neck around two and a half years ago,” said Rebecca Miceli, director of animal care at the Wild Animal Sanctuary, theorizing that the injury was inflicted by a guillotine-type gate in the lion’s cage. “From what we know, which is very limited, Guero’s owner came home from vacation and noticed Guero …
Prommune, IAH Relocating to KC CorridorMay 13, 2015Kansas has netted two more animal health companies. Vaccine developer Prommune Inc. is moving its commercial operations to Overland Park, Kan., and the biotechnology company Integrated Animal Health (IAH) is establishing its new headquarters in Lawrence, Kan. They join more than 300 other animal-related companies, ranging from product distributor AgriLabs to pharmaceutical giant Zoetis Inc., that have offices, factories, laboratories or warehouses in the Kansas City Animal Health Corridor. The roughly 250-mile-wide area stretches from Columbia, Mo., in the east to Manhattan, Kan., in the west. “The corridor is home to the largest concentration of animal health industry assets in the world, and more and more companies are seeing the benefit of a corridor location,” said Kimberly Young, president of the industry organization. The Kansas City Animal Health Corridor announced today that Prommune, which is working on vaccines to fight swine flu and avian flu, selected temporary office space in Overland Park. The company is headquartered in Omaha, Neb., but hopes to move everything to Overland Park by year’s end, said Sam Sanderson, Ph.D., Prommune’s founder and CEO. “Once we get the company cooking and capitalized, we will bust out of here and head out down there,” Sanderson said. Prommune, …
