Clinical

Sometimes cancer is easy to diagnose and sometimes it takes months to arrive at an answer. To tackle an opponent as widespread and insidious as cancer, we need all the tools that modern science has to offer – and now, we have one more – liquid biopsy.

AAHA Vice President Parva Bezrutczyk, DVM, shows how improvisational comedy techniques can be applied to the world of veterinary medicine. The AAHA Community answers the question: “How do you schedule and charge for sedated exams?” This month’s Scoop news articles include: Disease Discovered in Orphaned Kittens; NAVTA, NAVC Join Forces to Educate Pet Owners About Vet Techs; FDA Approves Oral Solution to Treat Cats’ Anxiety and Fear; Pet’s Quality of Life Drives Owner Decision-Making in Emergency Situations; and more!

By taking proactive steps to maintain their pets’ dental health, pet parents can significantly contribute to their pets’ overall health and happiness. When tooth brushing is challenging, dental chews can be an at-home alternative.

It’s hard enough to make our own exercise routines work, so how can we get pets moving? Martha G. Cline, DVM, DACVIM (Nutrition), chair of the 2021 AAHA Nutrition and Weight-Loss Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats, touts the benefits of staying active for pets, including longer life spans and fewer health problems.

We dig into a CPR refresher from the Reassessment Campaign on Veterinary Resuscitation (RECOVER) initiative in this brief overview. Look for newly revised CPR guidelines from RECOVER in 2024 to help ensure that all practices have the training to save lives.

Virtual care offers huge benefits for your patients, clients, staff, and bottom line. These include increased workflow efficiency, improved work-life balance, better and more thorough care for patients, and added convenience value for clients. It is no surprise that the lynchpin of well-implemented virtual care begins and ends with veterinary technicians, assistants, and care coordinators.

In Practice is a new feature in our newly redesigned Trends. Each month the final page of Trends will feature a useful and practical graphic that can be downloaded from the Trends website. This month, we have an infographic on the ins and outs of telehealth.

What’s going on with the canine respiratory illness in the news? Is it viral or bacterial—or possibly overblown media coverage? NEWStat talks to veterinarians facing the outbreak and looks into the research being done to solve the mystery.

This executive summary gives an overview of these new guidelines, with their systematic approach to diagnosis, treatment, and management of allergic skin diseases in dogs and cats. The guidelines describe detailed diagnosis and treatment plans for flea allergy, food allergy, and atopy in dogs and for flea allergy, food allergy, and feline atopic skin syndrome in cats.

In her second appearance on Central Line: The AAHA Podcast, Kathleen Cooney, DVM, CHPV, DACAW resident, explains that a large part of delivering that beautiful euthanasia experience is self-regulation on the part of the vet team, which also helps keep compassion fatigue at bay.