Vet Gazette

A 2012 survey by the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention found that 52.5 percent of dogs and 58.5 percent of cats were overweight or obese. Here are is a short list of easy tips to help a pet slim down.

The Reproductive Medicine team at the OSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital works mostly with horses and dogs, providing breeding services like artificial insemination and pregnancy evaluations. Last month they did something different: a laparoscopic spay surgery on a cougar.

The Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon recently acquired a female cougar. Although she was kept in a separate enclosure, a nearby male cougar got so agitated by her, he managed to get through the fence enough to bite a chunk out of her tail. Because the game park has plenty of cougars, they decided to solve the problem by spaying the new female.

OSU Drs. Hernan Montilla and Charles Estill performed the surgery in the Wildlife Safari hospital with assistance from theriogenology resident Dr. Clare Scully and staff veterinarians at the park. They also invited fourth-year student Ashley Runey to participate.

Runey is writing her senior paper on advanced reproduction techniques in large cats. “What is so wonderful about our clinicians, is they all get to know each and every one of us and our interests in veterinary medicine,” she says. “Then they truly try to give us as many opportunities as possible for hands-on experience in the field we hope to pursue.”

The OSU surgery team used a laparoscopic, minimally invasive surgery technique to spay the cougar. Several incisions, about the size of a quarter, were made to accommodate a tiny camera and the surgical instruments. The veterinarians then operated while viewing the procedure on a video monitor. The ovaries were removed through the same small incisions. “I was surprised how quick and clean the procedure was,” says Runey.

Minimally invasive surgery is especially beneficial for wild animals. “It reduces pain, recovery time, and aftercare,” says Estill. A post-surgery dog can be given a collar and be kept fairly inactive until his incisions heal. Obviously, it’s not that easy with a wild cougar.

Careful planning and teamwork are also critical pieces of wild animal surgery. “Everyone had a job and each step was meticulously planned for the safety of us and the cougar,” says Runey.

The cougar recovered from the surgery quickly and is doing well. OSU’s collegial relationship with Wildlife Safari includes future collaboration, particularly on the park’s cheetah breeding program.

Meanwhile, Runey appreciates the unique opportunity the partnership with Wildlife Safari provided her. “It was great to work with some phenomenal veterinarians in the field of study I would like to pursue,” she says. A big ‘thank you’ to Dr. Alcantar at Wildlife Safari as well as the great advisors who care so much about our education: Dr. Montilla, Dr. Estill, and Dr. Scully.”

The VetMouseTrap™ holds a cat in
position for a CT scan.

Feline hyperthyroidism is the most common endocrine disease in cats.  Cats with elevated levels of thyroid hormone can experience increased appetite, weight loss, vomiting and hyperactivity. The condition is usually diagnosed by symptoms and/or a blood test, and is commonly treated with the drug Methimazole.

Although computer assisted tomography (CT) has been shown to be a reliable alternative for diagnosis, in the past it required a cat be anesthetized prior to scanning. Anesthesia presents additional risk to hyperthyroid cats who often have several health issues, including heart disease and kidney disease.

Dr. Sarah Nemanic, assistant professor of radiology, and Dr. Jana Gordon, assistant professor of internal medicine at the OSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital recently completed a study that may help improve both diagnosis and treatment of cats with feline hyperthyroidism.

The study had several goals: to determine if awake cats can easily be imaged by a CT, to measure the effect of Methimazole on thyroid size and volume, and to see if a pre-treatment CT scan can predict drug dosage.

Participating cats received computer assisted tomography (CT) before and after treatment with Methimazole. Although hyperthyroid cats move around a lot, Dr. Nemanic was able to scan the cats without anesthesia by using a VetMouseTrap™, a padded, clear plastic tube with breathing holes or scan them in their cat carrier. The speed of the CT at OSU also made the process easier. “The head and neck of a cat can be scanned in 3-5 seconds,” says Nemanic.

The study demonstrated that CT is a useful way to image the thyroid glands of awake cats.  “CT is the ideal imaging modality for the thyroid gland because the gland has iodine in it, and iodine is the contrast medium that is used for all contrast CT examinations. It makes the thyroid gland easy to see and measure. Also, CT has excellent spatial resolution, so it is a fantastic imaging modality for measuring size and volume,” says Dr. Nemanic.

Images taken in the CT before and after treatment with Methimazole confirmed that hyperthyroid cats have significantly larger thyroid glands than normal cats and that Methimazole treatment does not change the size of the thyroid gland but does significantly lower the brightness (attenuation) of the thyroid gland on CT.

OSU is hosting the International Symposium on Rehabilitation, Physical Therapy, and Sports Medicine at the LaSells Steward Center in Corvallis on August 4-8, 2014. Highlights of the conference include:

L to R: Dr. Morrie Craig, La Rea Johnston, Dr. Linda Blythe, and Dr. Erwin Pearson.

La Rea Johnston began teaching on the Botany faculty at OSU in 1959. Every spring, in her 200-level Botany class, she guided students through the fields around Corvallis, patiently teaching them to look closely at plants in order to identify different species. “When you first take them out in the field, you have to point out everything,” she says. “I think a lot of people are plant blind,” she says. “They just see a color.”

At that time, 200-level Botany was an elective open to students majoring in everything from Home Economics to Engineering, and many of the students enrolled chose to take it because they liked being outdoors or because their roommate said it was fun. After many years of teaching the class,  Johnston was given the option to quit – a perk for senior faculty. She declined. “It was my favorite class,” she says. “At the end of the term, the students would begin to really see plants. I had a student who was a physics major and he came in and said, ‘You have ruined my life!’ I said ‘Oh my goodness, what did I do?’ And he said, ‘I used to be a hiker. Now I get out of the car, I see a plant and I run over and sit down and look at it. Then I walk ten feet, see another plant and I look at that. I never get to hike anymore.”

In the 1960s Dr. Dean Smith was the director of the OSU Diagnostic Laboratory. One day, he showed up in Johnston’s office with a problem: local cattle were eating something that was toxic and, in some cases, fatal. He thought Johnston might be able to identify the poisonous plant. “I said, ‘I don’t know. Let’s go look’ and we went on a field trip,” she says. That trip led to a discussion of the possibility of identifying plants from pieces left in rumen contents. Johnston had never done it before but was willing to try. “It turned out, it was very doable.” she says. Soon, Smith was bringing Johnston the contents of animal stomachs on a semi-regular basis. “The professor in the office next to mine asked me to keep my door shut because I was stinking up the hallway,” she laughs.

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This summer’s AVMA Annual Convention in Denver July 25-29, is offering free registration and free events to students. There will also be a Veterinary Student and Recent Grad Lounge. Registration deadline is June 30.

For more information on events, interactive labs, speakers, and more, visit the convention website.