Joint pain and mobility

This workshop covered the diagnosis of developmental joint disease and degenerative conditions in dogs and cats, and then looked at a multimodal approach to managing joint pain in dogs and cats. It also outlined the advice to give to owners regarding the different ways that they can manage these conditions.

The four main causes of joint pain in dogs are:

The main developmental joint diseases are:

Pups are born with normal hips, but even from a few weeks old, changes associated with hip dysplasia can be seen. This laxity within the hips causes wear and tear, which leads to arthritis. Classically the breeds which overrepresented hip dysplasia cases were large breeds such as German Shepherd and Labradors; however it now appears to be more common among smaller breeds such as Cocker Spaniels and Spaniel crosses.

This is over-represented in Labradors, and forelimb lameness seems to cause more issues than hindlimb lameness because of loadbearing issues. This causes conditions including an ununited anconeal process, fragmented coronoid process and incongruencies, which can cause secondary arthritis. Effects on mobility include lameness, increased movement through the carpal joints, a shortening of the affected forelimb stride length, choppy gait and external rotation of forelimbs. Bilateral disease can be quite difficult to assess because it does not always cause frank lameness.