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Ed Yeates reporting American medicine is going to the dogs, but maybe that's not so bad! For the first time in Utah, an animal hospital now has a full-fledged CT scan system for dogs and cats.
Since pet owners seem to spare nothing in the care of their animals, this is not completely unexpected.
Up until now, for complicated medical conditions or ailments that required detailed pictures of the brain or other organs, veterinarians had to take an animal to University Hospital for a scan on a human CT. But not anymore! Now Fido and Felix have their very own machine modified and designed just for them.
"This machine has been adapted in that we have to use different settings for animals. Obviously, their size, the nature of their tissue and all, that is different. So, you just have to develop a whole new protocol of techniques in order to get the best images," said Dr. Magali Lequient, a DMV at University Veterinary Hospital.
University Veterinary Hospital is the first in this state to get the machine. It's far from the price we pay for a human scan but still within the market a pet owner might expect for something out of the ordinary. "Six hundred dollars right now, with the cost of sedation and all the supportive care that is needed to make the sedation safe," Lequient said.
But CT scans allow veterinarians to see and understand chronic problems that have been going on for a long time.
"Let's say a pet who has been limping on the front legs. X-rays are actually very limited. Sometimes the info you get is very limited when you're talking about an elbow, things like that," Lequient explained. "The same thing for the brain, dogs who have had seizures."
Just like their human counterparts, dogs and cats are living longer now, simply because they get better care. At our side all the time, they're adopting human traits, getting their daily vitamins and minerals, getting vaccinated and more!
This CT room is one more example of "more," and you know more is still to come. There will be more diagnostic tools and drugs tailor-made for animals.
Chemotherapy is also a big thing in veterinary medicine. It's proving to be just as effective against cancer in our pets as it is in us.
E-mail: eyeates@ksl.com
