Clinical

History taking and diagnosis in cases of feline house soiling

Total house soiling cases = 105 (54% of cases seen).

Atopic dermatitis and the veterinary nurse

Atopic dermatitis is an allergic skin condition that can come under the umbrella term of atopy. In human medicine atopy encompasses three conditions — allergic rhinitis, asthma and atopic dermatitis....

Perioperative hypothermia and surgical site infections part 1

Healthy, conscious animals respond to heat loss via temperature sensitive cells in the hypothalamus which initiate a response such as shivering and vasoconstriction (Murison, 2001).

There's no such thing as a free meal: environmental enrichment for rabbits

A rabbit's natural diet consists of very tough, fibrous foods of low nutritional value — they have a very diverse diet consisting of hay, grass, bark, and roots of many types of plants. Such low...

Antibiotic resistance in veterinary practice: a veterinary nurse's perspective

The first antibiotic penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 (Fleming, 1929), and more than 100 compounds have been found since, but no new class has been found since 1987 (Ling et al,...

Canine leishmaniosis: an update

L. infantum is transmitted through the bite of the sandfly. The protozoa parasites are present in the superficial dermis of infected dogs, either within macrophages or free in the tissue. During a...

Guidelines for recognition, assessment and treatment of pain

This document is designed to provide the user with easy-to-implement, core fundamentals on the successful recognition and treatment of pain in the day-to-day small animal clinical practice setting....

The Pet Travel Scheme (PETS) and parasite protection for the travelling pet

PETS was introduced by the European Parliament in 2000 to allow the UK and some other European countries stricter travel controls than the rest of the EU. In January 2012, PETS was updated in line...

The Veterinary Nurse workshops 2015: feline patients and stress

If cats are faced with something stressful, their most common method of alleviating the stress they feel is to create distance between themselves and the stressor, i.e. they use flight. However, their...