Clinical

Bypassing their way into your heart: considerations for the cardiothoracic patient

Therapeutic hypothermia is applied via cooling of the blood in the cardiopulmonary bypass machine (Kanemoto, 2014). This reduces the metabolic rate and oxygen demand from the tissues reducing risk of...

Chronic inflammatory enteropathy: faecal microbiota transplantation in clinical practice

The development of canine chronic enteropathy clinical activity indices extrapolated from human medicine offer a quantifiable and repeatable measure of monitoring response to treatment. The most...

Capnography for the veterinary nurse

CO2 within the body can be measured either directly via arterial sampling, which gives us the partial pressure of CO2 in arterial blood (PaCO2), or indirectly via capnography. PaCO2 readings are...

Parasites in cats and dogs

Internal parasites live inside the animal's body, in different locations including the small intestine, the lung, the heart, the subcutaneous tissue or even inside the eye. The majority of internal...

Why is nutrition important?

Preventative medicine (which does not just include nutrition) can be subdivided into three parts:.

Immune-mediated polyarthritis: the role of the veterinary nurse

Non-erosive IMPA is typically induced by a type III hypersensitivity reaction where immune complexes collect in the joint space. Immune complexes are derived from bound antigen–antibody formations and...

Postoperative care of brachycephalic patients: airway management and cardiovascular support

An assessment of cardiovascular function in the patient can easily be performed using subjective methods such as mucous membrane colour, capillary refill time, pulse rate and quality, peripheral and...

Taking the pressure off: glaucoma and what can be done to help

Primary (hereditary) glaucoma is a congenital abnormality causing a malfunction and malformation of the eye/s, reducing the flow of aqueous humour and often slowly increasing intraocular pressure over...

Joint pain and mobility

The four main causes of joint pain in dogs are:.

Emergency management of the seizuring patient

A seizure is a clinical manifestation of excessive hyperexcitability in the cerebral cortex. There is a lot of electrical activity going on in the brain and it is not being coordinated in the way it...

Surgical site infections: preparation, technique and perioperative prevention

Translocation of endogenous microbial flora is the most common route of surgical site infection. Skin preparation and aseptic techniques aim to reduce or eliminate the growth of resident and transient...

Anaesthetic management of caesarean sections in dogs

The anaesthetic plan must aim for maternal and neonatal survival, presenting a unique challenge to the anaesthetist. Exposure of the fetuses to anaesthetic drugs, since many cross the placenta...