Medical Terms

A urethral stricture is an abnormal narrowing of the urethra, the tube that goes from the bladder to the outside world and which animals pee through. A urethral stricture often causes urinary issues in pets.

An arthroscopy involves inserting a camera into a joint. It’s a type of keyhole surgery. An arthroscopy can be done for various reasons in pets, but is often used to help with diagnosis.

Multimodal treatment refers to combining different types of treatments when treating a pet. Multimodal treatment can have advantages over a single treatment approach in pets.

A “diagnosis of exclusion” is a diagnosis that is made when all other possible causes of a pet’s clinical signs have been ruled out. It’s necessary when there isn’t a test to confirm one of the causes, so instead we have to rule out other causes of the symptoms to get a diagnosis.

A body condition score (BCS) is a subjective measurement of your pet’s body shape, and allows us to estimate body fat. In cats and dogs, a BCS is given on a 1-9 or 1-5 scale. 1 is the lowest BCS, which indicates your pet is too thin. 9 (or 5, on the smaller scale) is the highest, which indicates your pet is too fat. 3/5 and 4-5/9 is perfect weight.

The prescribing cascade is a decision-tree framework used by veterinarians to select which prescription product to use when there isn’t an authorised veterinary medicine available. The cascade means that human drugs and medications meant for other species can be used in pets, but only if certain legal requirements are satisfied.

Antibiotic resistance is when a certain antibiotic stops working on a group of bacteria because they’ve developed genes to protect themselves. Bacteria can be resistant to one antibiotic or several (multi-drug resistance).

Intravenous (IV) fluids are sterile liquids that are injected directly into the pet’s veins. IV fluids have many purposes in pets

Exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI) occurs when the pancrease does not produce enough digestive juices. EPI impairs digestion.

Hypothyroidism refers to abnormally low thyroid hormone levels. Hypothyroidism mostly affects dogs.