Clinical

Knowing your way around ‘the big C’ in veterinary practice

Assessing the spread, or metastasis, of a primary malignant neoplasm is known as staging. This often involves sampling or removing the drainage lymph node adjacent to the affected site in combination...

Creepy crawlies in dogs and cats: how to find and treat them

Cheyletiellosis is typically a very mild, but highly contagious skin condition caused by surface living Cheyletiella spp. mites. They can affect many species but are not thought to be host specific;...

Cardiovascular monitoring of the canine gastric dilatation volvulus patient

Initial therapy is aimed at stabilisation prior to general anaesthesia, although a prolonged surgical delay is not recommended due to worsening gastric and splenic ischaemia (Broome and Walsh, 2003)....

Practical behavioural first aid for rabbits

An understanding of the natural lifestyle of rabbits makes it easy to see why the traditional way of keeping rabbits impacts on their welfare. What an owner considers to be a behaviour problem may...

How to perform a conscious oral examination on a cat and what to look for

A gentle way to examine the teeth is to use one hand to expose the cat's maxillary teeth and the other to expose the mandibular teeth. The first step is to place one hand on top of the cat's head and...

Low-stress handling for long-term wound care

Mariti et al (2017) discovered that dogs which were uncomfortable with their owners carrying out procedures at home would also be intolerant of the veterinary nurse or surgeon doing the same in the...

Surgical treatment options for hip dysplasia

As the name suggests, this is removal of the head and neck of the affected femur with the outcome being immediate relief from the pain of OA or the prevention of symptoms of OA (Harper, 2017). The...

Practical behavioural first aid for feline patients

Having evolved as a territorial species that predated on rodents, but that was also predated on by larger carnivores (Bradshaw et al, 2012), the cat is effectively, constantly, asking itself ‘Am I...

The role of infection control in the prevention of the transmission of feline viruses

It is fortunate that in the present day, most cats will travel to the clinic in a secure carrier that reduces the possibility of patients coming directly into contact with each other. Viruses that are...

Vector-borne parasite transmission in the UK and the role of the veterinary nurse in education

Strategies to limit vector-borne disease rely on a combination of practical control measures and preventative drug treatments; these form the basis of control protocols for individual pets. As the...

Faecal-oral parasite transmission and the veterinary nurse's role in education

Toxocara spp. are a group of intestinal nematodes with species infecting dogs (Toxocara canis) and cats (Toxocara cati), both of which have zoonotic potential. Adult worms lie in the small intestine...

Poisons affecting the kidney

Poisoning can result in adverse effects on the kidney through a variety of mechanisms, including formation of toxic metabolites, interference with normal physiological process and, in some cases,...