Part I Lyme disease is accompanied by enough paranoia. Bad headlines don’t help. A recent article on The Daily Mail is about Lyme disease and pets. It’s actually not a bad article, outlining some important issues. However, the headline shows a big disconnect between some good content in the article and a complete misunderstanding
Antibiotics in animals: ACVIM consensus statement
Every year, the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) commissions "consensus statements" on specific topics. They’re developed by an expert panel, put up for review by ACVIM members (board certified veterinary internal medicine specialists), and published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine.
Hot off the (electronic) press is the 2015 ACVIM Consensus
Cats and peritoneal dialysis
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll note the recurring theme of "every animal (and person) is carrying multiple microbes that can harm you, given the right circumstances. Fortunately, the right circumstances don’t usually occur."
There are situations in which those risks increase, and understanding cost-benefit is a key aspect of disease prevention. Sometimes pet
Canadian companion animal Ebola guidance
Concern (paranoia?) about Ebola in animals has died down lately, which is a good thing. In the meantime, guidelines have been developed to help handle potential animal Ebola-exposure issues, which is also a good thing.
While I’ve been slow posting them, Canadian guidance for management of companion animals potentially exposed to Ebola virus and for
Rabies exposure in a shelter, again
As I mentioned a few days ago, eliminating the risk of rabies in animal shelters is pretty much impossible. Another shelter-associated rabies exposure situation highlights the problems.
A cat at the Washington Area Humane Society was recently diagnosed with rabies, resulting in three people receiving post-exposure prophylaxis (i.e. rabies antibodies and a series
Cat hoarding and rabies
The cats were mainly indoor cats owned by one person – a pretty classical case of cat hoarding. All were in very poor condition. There were vaccination records for 15 of them, but there was no way to
2013 US rabies recap
It’s that time of year. No, not for snow (although it is snowing here at the moment). It’s time for the annual US rabies surveillance report in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Dyer et al. Rabies surveillance in the United States during 2013).
The highlights…
- Over 5800 rabid animals
Animal Ebola guidance documents, hot off the press
Today, guidance documents coordinated by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Veterinary Medical Association were released. CDC descriptions of the two documents are below. Click on the title to get the document.
Interim Guidance for Public Health Officials on Pets of Ebola Virus Disease Contacts
This document provides interim guidance
Casual cat causality
The credit (or blame) for the alliteration goes to colleague and frequent blog material supplier Dr. Stephen Page. It relates to an article in the prestigious medical journal Lancet (Kagihara et al. 2014) entitled “A fatal pasteurella empyema.”
The article describes the case of a 60-year-old man from Honolulu who was
Vet clinic infections…who should pay?
The following question was posed to Dr. Patty Khuly in an article she writes for the Miami Herald.
"Our cats had to go to the vet hospital last week to have their teeth cleaned. The procedures went very well and, as predicted, both were back to normal that evening. Unfortunately, two days later they