This workshop covered the prevalence of osteoarthritis (OA) in cats, how to raise owner awareness and where the registered veterinary nurse (RVN) can help with diagnosis of OA. It finishes up with the treatment and management of feline OA. Attendees learned about the difference between OA and degenerative joint disease (DJD), and how to recognise that feline OA is not just a disease of elderly cats, but a condition that occurs in all adult cat life stages.
There are a number of options available to raise awareness of OA in cat owners and RVNs can play a key role in this through the creation of educational material for the practice's social media or displays with in the clinic. Additionally, they can start to include feline OA check-lists into their routine appointments with cat owners, to play a more proactive role in screening for this disease. As part of this session attendees learned the wide range of clinical signs that can indicate feline OA (Figure 1) and how these clinical signs may relate to the chronic pain caused by OA rather than the disease itself.
RVNs that run feline nurse clinics can play a huge role in the diagnosis of OA as presenting signs can often be changes that may lead to a nurse appointment being requested, such as matting of fur or nails becoming overgrown. This session talked through the path to diagnosis specifically for veterinary nurses and gave them the tools to further investigate these clinical signs.
Finally, it finished with the treatment and management of feline OA looking at analgesia, disease modifying therapeutics and additional support such as acupuncture, hydrotherapy and physiotherapy. Environmental modification is also discussed and the need to adapt the placement and type of key resources, such as food, water and litter trays as well as ensuring the cats to have access to their resting and hiding places, which may involve the movement of furniture.
In the final quiz those listening live indicated all the ways they were going to help cats with OA at their practice, from raising owner awareness and improving early recognition of the disease to running OA nurse clinics to help with the treatment and management of those already diagnosed. This session provided lots of ideas as to where the RVN can help cats with OA, which they can then contextualise to their own clinic, and will hopefully empower them to become champions for feline OA in their practice.