Medical developments improve animal health
It’s a bit concerning when the nurses look at me strangely (or more than normal anyway) when I mention bands like Talking Heads, Cold Chisel or even the iconic Bruce Springsteen.
I guess I never thought that I would be a generation ahead. Somebody recently said ‘‘it’s the same looking out, but different for others looking in’’ to describe ageing.
My generation was divided in to those that had read Lord of the Rings, and those that hadn’t. Not who had downloaded it or not.
But in the past two or three years, there has also been a bit of wizardry in several areas of my trade. And some of those developments have been amazing and benefit my patients so much.
For instance, in years gone by, we used to anaesthetise patients with both intravenous drugs and gases that made them groggy for at least a day. Many patients had to stay in overnight because they were too sleepy to go home.
Sometimes, in isolated situations, patients were even anaesthetised with a very small dose of the drug used to euthanise patients.
Necessity was the mother of invention.
In Australia, I used an anaesthetic machine which had old glass petrol containers which had been adapted because of limited resources during World War II. It was originally used with ether – that was scary. I went and bought my own anaesthetic machine to work there.
Now we have much safer intravenous drugs that act for a very short time with little residual effects. Before, these were used only on ‘‘at risk’’ patients. Now, we use them on all patients. Once asleep with an IV drug, the little guys are given another new and much safer gas agent mixed with 100 per cent oxygen to breathe. Again, this gas is shorter acting and we can use it with much more confidence in even higher risk patients, including bunnies and little cage pets.
But, I think vaccines are the real area of advance that we will see a huge development in very shortly.
Already, several diseases that once devastated the dog and cat populations are very rarely seen because of vaccine improvements.
Puppy vaccinations have dramatically reduced the incidence of parvo-virus – an often fatal intestinal virus – and because of the increased effectiveness of these vaccines, we can be more confident about socialising young puppies. Previously, we didn’t feel happy that the puppies were protected against parvo until 16 weeks and used to recommend keeping them isolated until then, which resulted in some pretty unsociable dogs.
Interestingly though, there are now reports of outbreaks of some of this and other nasty dog diseases overseas because people have stopped vaccinating in the belief that the threat is so low. Continued vaccination is very important, just like in people. Every dog should be vaccinated and it is such a small cost to save their lives.
Hip replacements are already available for our patients and kidney transplants are available overseas, although there is a lot of debate about the ethics concerning the welfare of the donor cats.
But, the biggest recent news is the release of the new ‘‘skin allergy’’ drug for dogs. All the hype is correct and we have been using it for some time now at the hospital with great success.
This is the time of year when many of our patients are driven crazy by itchy skin for a variety of reasons and this drug may be invaluable for your friend.
Providing our furry friends the best possible care and techniques is what it’s all about – and having fun along the way.