Vet Times

Tag: Pathology

  • Don’t rush: a systematic approach to x-rays

    Don’t rush: a systematic approach to x-rays

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    One of my responsibilities in our emergency hospital is the training and mentoring of vets new to the field of emergency and critical care. A common area I have found where clinicians request more training is radiographic interpretation. When I review radiographs and find pathology that was missed, it Is more often due to a…

  • Rat bait’s sneaky trick: bleeding into the dorsal tracheal membrane

    Rat bait’s sneaky trick: bleeding into the dorsal tracheal membrane

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    Most of us are familiar with anticoagulant rodenticide toxicosis and the range of clinical signs it can present with, but there is one potentially fatal manifestation of coagulation pathology that is perhaps not as widely known… Dogs with severe clotting problems will occasionally bleed into the dorsal tracheal membrane. This causes collapse of the thoracic…

  • Seizures, part 2: the differentials

    Seizures, part 2: the differentials

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    In part one of this series we discussed the important questions to ask when taking a history from owners of dogs and cats that are having seizures. In this part, we look at the differential diagnoses for these cases. There are many ways to classify the different causes of seizures, but the simplest is as…

  • A Christmas cheer

    A Christmas cheer

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    This year has had, at least from my peculiar and very Western perspective, a peculiarly narrative structure; specifically, the classic narrative structure of a disaster movie (although at times it has felt more like a 10-season box set). It started, as many good stories do, right at the start of the year with dark rumours…

  • Time enough at last

    Time enough at last

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    I left general practice – a job I felt was ultimately, and quite literally, killing me – after nearly two decades, and began a career in clinical pathology four years ago. Some residency (training) programmes are three years, but ours is a commercial lab so it takes a little longer. I have been building toward…

  • Loss (reprise)

    Loss (reprise)

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    My father-in-law was the type of gentleman they don’t make any more. He was a far calmer, kinder, friendlier and gentler man than it is within my nature to be. Although he was her stepfather, he was far more of a dad to my wife than the previous incumbent. He was the kind of grandfather…

  • The wonder of cells

    The wonder of cells

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    Since starting a career in clinical pathology, I have seen a lot of strange and wonderful sights down my microscope… It’s like being given a window into weird new worlds – tiny battlegrounds of leukocytes, tumour cells and microorganisms, against a backdrop of cytokines, stroma and necrosis. It’s not quite Saving Private Ryan, but with…

  • The big C

    The big C

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    I spend much of my working life looking for it, identifying it, and discussing it. My personal life has already been touched by it, and there’s a not inconsiderable chance it will kill me some day. News organisations neatly divide every object in the world into something that will either cure or cause it or,…

  • Cytology tips: cellularity

    Cytology tips: cellularity

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    “Cellularity is poor, and preservation is poor.” As openings to literary works go, it may not have the skill of “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or “The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel”, but it certainly has an emotional…

  • Cytology tips: preservation

    Cytology tips: preservation

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    There’s a part of me that’s constantly surprised cytology works at all. The idea you can suck up a few cells from a patient, squirt them on to a slide, stain them and – by looking at the shape of the cells and how they relate to one another – work out what is happening…