Transcript
Osteoarthritis (OA)
Being Proactive Video Transcript
Denis J. Marcellin-Little
DEDV, DACVS, DECVS, DACVSMR
“The incentive to diagnose osteoarthritis earlier is the same as any other disease. I don’t think you would want to wait to diagnose renal disease until you’re in renal
failure or diagnose cardiac disease until you are in heart failure...
We need to catch osteoarthritis much earlier before the limb fails or the dog fails, and that is going to be [a] cheaper and more effective way to manage it.
“We need to become much more proactive, more sensitive to the pain perceived by dogs who have osteoarthritis, and detect it earlier and manage it more comprehensively.”
David L. Dycus
DVM, MS, CCRP, DACVS-SA
“The problem is...that while in the short period of time we can improve the comfort, the issue is that the joint itself has already become damaged.
“And so, we have to take that opportunity to start discussing with owners about what the long-term aspect is going to be like in saying that we fixed the issue now, but the end result is going to be the potential for arthritic changes to develop.
“We want to start them at the very beginning course of the stage when we have maybe a little bit of under functioning of not only the chondrocytes but the synovial sites and we still have a lot of the cartilage left intact that we can work with.
“...as we’re starting to move into that process of slowing down and minimizing progression of arthritic changes, that’s a very good avenue of timing of when we want to introduce Adequan® Canine rather than waiting until the patient comes back with severe radiographic signs, severe periarticular fibrosis and a loss of range of motion.”
Julia Tomlinson
BVSc, MS, PhD, DACVS, CCRP,CVSMT, DACVSMR
“I use Adequan Canine in practice early on [with OA disease] to try and alleviate joint inflammation and to help to intervene without using a daily oral nonsteroidal or other pharmaceutical.
So, trying to get ahead of things again to minimize the things that the owner has to use with the patient.
“I am seeing patients and examining them for subtle signs of joint pain very early on and communicating to the client the importance of intervention with arthritis.”
Whit Cothern
DVM
“We are establishing and implementing protocols that will provide us the ability to recognize these dogs earlier in the osteoarthritis process, begin that dialogue with those pet owners, and let them know it’s okay that we found this. They shouldn’t be scared. If anything, it’s good that we found it early.
“We established protocols in which Adequan® [Canine] is used more proactively in the management of osteoarthritis, especially in our younger patients, and we’re trying to do this proactively...”
Anne Dagner
DVM
“When we’re starting a dog on Adequan® Canine, we have to talk to the owners about the fact that it’s going to be several injections in a row as part of the protocol. So, to make that easier for them we do a few things.
“We have our owner purchase the whole box at one time to start so that there’s a dedicated box of the medication for their dog. Then the next thing we do is schedule all of our injections all at one time.
We don’t wait and say call to make the next appointment. We go ahead and get those on the books for all eight injections.”
The participants are paid consultants for American Regent Animal Health. The opinions of these consultants may not be representative of American Regent Animal Health.
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