Vet Times

Tag: vomiting

  • Giardia in cats

    Giardia in cats

    —

    by

    Giardia lamblia is a protozoan parasite found in the small intestine of vertebrates. The most common cause of transmission in cats is faecal-oral, but cats can also become infected by drinking water containing the infective cysts. Most cats are asymptomatic, although they may keep passing on cysts for months or years. Clinical signs are most…

  • Compromise: learning the ‘art of veterinary medicine’

    —

    by

    It was my first day at work. I was nervous as heck, keen to impress, and desperate to prove to myself I could actually function as a veterinary surgeon (and, ideally, without writing my car off in the first week, which is what my university mates had voted me the person most likely in the…

  • Prognosis not diagnosis

    —

    by

    “Prognose, prognose, prognose” is a phrase uttered regularly by a vet I’ve spent a lot of EMS and pre-uni work experience with. Anyone would think he’s trying to drive the point home. But it makes a lot of sense: although we have myriad diagnostic tests available to us, they won’t always give us a definitive…

  • Value is in the eye of the beholder

    —

    by

    “Price is only a concern in the absence of value” – I saw this pinned to the wall in a practice I visited, and to a large extent believe it to be true. But what is value? Take inanimate objects: their value to us is not only in their functionality, but also in their meaning to…

  • Tremorgenic toxins and chocolate poisoning

    —

    by

    This past fortnight or so we’ve seen a handful of cases in which dogs which have been struck down with severe whole-body tremors and seizure-like episodes shortly after (or while they are on) a walk. Each dog was from a different part of town, and all were out walking in different areas. Initially we didn’t…

  • Inducing vomiting in dogs

    —

    by

    In our practice, the preferred way to induce vomiting after ingestion of poisons (most commonly raisins, chocolate and rat poison) is subcutaneous apomorphine. If a strong acid or alkali has been ingested, this is contraindicated. This also seems to occur most commonly out of hours for some strange reason. We give 30μg/kg SC and wait for the desired effect,…

  • Paging Doctor Google

    —

    by

    Something I have noticed in the past few years (and mentioned in my last post) is that people are leaving sick animals longer before bringing them to the vet. I wonder if other colleagues have noticed a change too? In the early noughties the norm in canine and feline practice used to be a day or…

  • The shadow that stalks

    —

    by

    As I finished looking at the somewhat dishevelled six-year-old Westie I reviewed my findings; TPR normal, skin a little greasy with saliva stained paws, axillae, groin, ears lichenified and stenotic, abdomen relaxed and nothing abnormal, an overgrown claw (now clipped). Ears really should be seen by the regular day-vet, but not really the realm for…