Why take your 'healthy' cat to the veterinarian?

Yesterday, a friend of mine asked me why she had received a reminder to bring her two year old, house cat in for a wellness examination. She explained that Emma didn’t need vaccines and she never went outside, did she really need to come in? I was surprised that my friend, who was devoted to her cat, would ask such a question. But her questions also made me stop and think.

Bayer Animal Health recently published a survey. They found that of the 74.1 million pet cats in the United States, 45% do not see a veterinarian. They also found that over the past 10 years the number of feline visits to the veterinary office had decreased by 15%. This means that approximately half of all the pet cats in this country do not receive veterinary care, let alone the wellness visits that I was recommending for my friends cat. 

So why is it important for a seemingly healthy house cat to see a veterinarian for an annual examination? The Bayer study actually went on to highlight exactly why those visits are so important. They identified the 5 most common health issues in cats as (1) lower urinary tract disease, (2) renal disease, (3) hyperthyroidism, (4) gastrointestinal disease, (5) periodontal disease. Each of these conditions are either prevented or ameliorated by early identification and prompt intervention. 

If we were discussing dogs, one might argue that these are all things that an astute pet owner could identify. Dental disease causes bad breath, lower urinary tract disease means that the dog is asking to go out more of having accidents in the house, any body knows that. But we are talking about cats, cats live often secretive and reclusive life styles. They don’t ask to go out, but decide when they want to use their litter box and then do so. We often free feed or cats so the amount of food and water they consume daily is not always evident. They often are sleeping, and unless we are in the habit of encouraging them to play and interact with us daily lethargy and weakness may not be appreciated until it becomes severe. All five of those common feline diseases identified in the Bayer survey can be silent killers, slowly eroding a cats health without the owners even being aware of them.

The annual exam allows us a chance to establish a recorded and accurate body weight, a complete oral examination, otic examination, dermatologic examination, orthopedic examination, cardiac examination and abdominal palpation.These examinations help us identify even subtle signs of illness. The annual visit also allows the veterinarian to ask some thought provoking questions about your pets habits and activity that you may not have considered previously. The feline annual examination, just like your regular visits to the doctor and the dentist, allows early recognition of the signs of many disease processes, not just the five listed previously. It also gives the pet owner a forum for asking questions about diet, exercise, flea and tick control and heartworm disease in cats. They are all topics discussed in the popular press, but best addressed by an educated health care professional that has you and your cats best interests in mind. 

Emma did come in for her annual examination and passed with flying colors. Regardless of whether she will need vaccines in the future, her owners recognize the value of her annual check-up and, when she becomes older, her bi-annual examination. I expect Emma to be a member of my friends family for a very long time to come.

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The Changing Face of Family Medicine

It has been a long time in the making, but we have officially kicked off a new phase to our hospital. We call it a family medicine service or a wellness clinic. The focus of VCS Pets First is to provide the routine, day to day, veterinary care that all pets need within a facility that houses an emergency service , a specialty hospital and hopefully, in the future, many other pet orientated services. This gives the client and the pets access to some incredibly skilled individuals, both doctors and staff, as well as access to the hospital 24/7 and all of its advanced equipment.
What is really exciting about developing this service now, are the chages that are occuring within our industry. We are setting the foundations for a service at the same time that our profession is realizing that vaccines are not necessary every year or even every other year. We are starting to see that the annual visit should be a time to focus on wellness, physical examinations, early diagnosis of health issues and, in general, preventative medicine that really, only includes vaccines as a minor aspect of patient care. This is exciting to me because I have always felt that we as a profession had made a fatal error in trying to use vaccines and dispensing drugs as the focal point of general practice and its revenue. Veterinarians are so much more than administrators of shots and drugs and we had been, in my etimation, selling ourselves short.
I recently had an opportunity to attend a lecture about vaccine protocols in veterinary medicine. It was great to hear that our professional organizations like ACVIM, AAHA and even the drug companies are recommending vaccines every 3 years after the 1 year -old cat or dog receives its booster and that after 7 years of age our cats and dogs may only need a rabies vaccine every 3 years. It is quite possible that we will learn over the next few years that we will extend the interval between vaccines even further.
Don't think that that means your pet should visit the veterinarian less often though, its those regular visits and examinations that will keep you pet healthy and make you aware of health issues that you might not have noticed if it were not for t he annual wellness examination with your family veterinarian.

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