Clinical

Recognising and caring for premature neonates

Certain breeds tend to give birth several days early while still producing fully formed neonates. Smaller breeds commonly produce immature puppies (Figure 1), even after a full-term pregnancy...

Wound healing for small animal practitioners: a refresher – part one

The wound healing process involves four key phases: bleeding, inflammatory, proliferation, and the maturation/remodelling phases (key events are outlined in Table 1). These phases are often assumed to...

Responsible use of parasiticides in pets

Pet ownership and animal assisted therapy have become an increasingly common means to improve the physical health and wellbeing of people, including those with social and psychological conditions...

How The Donkey Sanctuary is supporting multi-species rabies vaccination campaigns

Rabies is one of the deadliest diseases for mammals and is of huge global importance as a zoonosis. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 59 000 human deaths are caused by rabies annually...

Anaesthesia in exotics part 3: reptiles

Reptiles do not benefit from 100% oxygen during recovery because their stimulus to breathe is a lowered PaO2 (hypoxia). Providing 100% oxygen can lead to apnoea (Hedley, 2022). To stimulate...

How modern in-house diagnostics compare to external reference laboratories

One of the main benefits of testing in-house is the speed. Quick results reduce client stress (Giger, 2010), improving the client’s relationship with the veterinary team, reducing the likelihood of...

Improving feline and canine anaesthetic safety: a clinical audit on premedication choices

RCVS Knowledge: Clinical audit - https://knowledge.rcvs.org.uk/quality-improvement/tools-and-resources/clinical-audit/.

Chocolate toxicosis in pets

Chocolate is made from the fermented, dried then roasted beans of Theobroma cacao (Figure 1). After roasting, the shell is removed, and the remaining nibs are ground to cocoa mass which is liquefied...

The impact of human factors on veterinary anaesthesia

Human factors have frequently been studied in professions where mistakes can have disastrous consequences, such as the aviation industry and human medicine, and is now being considered more in...

RVN's perceptions of confidence levels of veterinary professionals when assessing pain in rabbits

In human medicine, doctors can rely on their patient's ability to communicate where the pain is and how much pain they are in, however, we cannot communicate in the same language as animals and so we...

Diabetes mellitus in dogs and cats and its associated complications

Diabetes mellitus impairs the body's ability to produce or respond to the hormone insulin, resulting in abnormal metabolism of carbohydrates and elevated levels of glucose in the blood and urine (Niaz...

Feline transfusion medicine for registered veterinary nurses

Feline blood types are determined using the AB blood system, which consists of three blood groups: A, B or AB. The clinical significance of feline blood groups is mainly because of the high level of...