Park Hill Vet: Beauty Of Bloodwork 

Diagnostic Screenings Help Detect Many Hidden Conditions

By Margot K. Vahrenwald, DVM, CVJ
For the GPHN

Why are veterinarians such vampires? 

Our patients cannot verbalize what is happening inside their bodies, nor do they always show specific clinical signs until a disease process is very advanced. And, our pets are at risk of many infectious diseases that have very vague clinical signs. Monitoring changes in bone marrow (complete blood count), major organ function (chemistry) and urine can help guide diagnosis and treatment.

This is why we like to test the blood.

Working with patients who have a much faster physiologic time clock requires us to rely on blood work to aid in detecting, diagnosing and monitoring disease that comes with age, which is very individual. This means that we recommend diagnostic lab work as part of working with a sick pet. It also helps us monitor healthy pets as part of preventive care by obtaining a diagnostic baseline of normal results that then can show trends through changes in future results.

While aging brings changes, being younger is not a guarantee of being free of health concerns. That’s why veterinarians advocate for lab work in younger animals or at earlier ages in at-risk breeds. Research through repeated, large scale annual data-crunching by one of the major veterinary reference lab services (IDEXX), consistently finds results that lead to diagnosis of disease:

For
dogs:

• 1 in 7 young dogs between ages 1 to 3 years 

• 1 in 5 adult dogs between 4 to 8 years

• 2 in 5 senior dogs over age 9 

For
cats:

• 1 in 5 young cats ages 1-7 years

• 1 in 3 mature cats between 7 to 9 years

• 3 in 5 senior cats age 10 and older

Conditions found in younger pets can be congenital diseases such as renal dysplasia, cancer and juvenile diabetes. These can carry poor prognoses but can help the owner and veterinarian support a good quality of life for a patient as long as reasonable.

Adult and senior findings can more often discover chronic disease that can be managed to maintain quality of life or prompt a change in medications to avoid a negative impact or a risk due to changes in organ function.

So you see, those drops of blood are a critical tool for your veterinarian to help you take the best care of your pets with a detailed internal physical exam.

Dr. Margot Vahrenwald is the owner of Park Hill Veterinary Medical Center at 2255 Oneida St. For more info, visit parkhillvet.com.