A couple of weekends ago I was a delegate at ECVIM congress which, this year, was very local – Liverpool! We had some excellent lectures from human and veterinary cardiologists regarding pulmonary hypertension and also Angiostrongylus – very topical as this parasite moves every Northwards.
I was also excited to hear about some developments regarding biomarkers provided by IDEXX laboratories. They have now released a new NTpro-BNP test which does not require a protease inhibitor tube – making it much easier to sample animals in practice. The other really breaking news is that next year they will release a SNAP feline NT-proBNP. This will allow vets to assay this biomarker in-house in dyspnoeic cats – and get an answer straight away.
NTpro-BNP has been shown to improve the confidence and accuracy of practitioners when deciding if cats are suffering from cardiac or non-cardiac dyspnoea – so a SNAP test could be invaluable in these patients which often need treatment ASAP.
Travails of the travelling cardiologist
Today I stopped in at Oakhill Veterinary centre to see the lovely Maddie who was such an angel for her scan. After lunch I headed to the airport with scanner in tow to get to Guernsey for my sister’s wedding. Sadly I forgot about the ultrasound gel safely stowed in the bag so I had to surrender it to Manchester Airport’s finest security guards… Definitely more than 100ml! Not sure they’d ever had to confiscate that before!
Great Dane DCM
I wanted to keep website visitors up to date with the current research we are conducting in to DCM in Great Danes. This is something I am passionate about as I have been involved with the breed for 5 years now. FREE screening is currently being carried out at the University of Liverpool and hopefully around the country in the near future. Get in touch if you have a Dane and find out if you could help in this important research!
Karlton Index Breed Health Awards
Hannah is honoured to be one of the judges for the Karlton Index Breed Health Awards, to be held at Discover Dogs on 10th November 2013 (www.thekarltonindex.com)