This is a very niche observation but something that I’ve not seen described elsewhere. In cats without any evidence of gastrointestinal disease there is often an asymmetrical thickening of the small intestinal mucosa at the jejuno-ileal junction. This is located between 1.5 – 4.0cm proximal to the ileo-caeco-colic junction. https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20123064781 Before I realised that this … Continue reading
Ultrasound is great for rheumatology generally and will yield useful information in many dogs with stifle injuries. I wanted to post some images of menisci because it’s been a voyage of discovery working out how what we see relates to what surgeons see on arthroscopy or arthrotomy, how to report these changes and what the … Continue reading
It’s been a while since my erstwhile mentor Dr Bob O’Brien published this nice article: Vet Radiol Ultrasound Jul-Aug 1998;39(4):354-6Urinary bladder mural hemorrhage associated with systemic bleeding disorders in three dogsR T O’Brien, E F Wood https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9710141/ …and ultrasound technology has moved on a bit in the meantime. This is a recent case of the … Continue reading
Hot off the JSAP press we have just been reading the new and exciting: J Small Anim Pract 2021 Mar;62(3):178-186Diagnostic accuracy of a lung ultrasound protocol (Vet BLUE) for detection of pleural fluid, pneumothorax and lung pathology in dogs and catsL Cole, M Pivetta, K Humm https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsap.13271 ‘Results: When using CT as the reference standard, … Continue reading
This is a useful thing to be able to do. If you can find the ICCJ then that gives you a rock solid reference point: you can then identify the ileum, proximal colon and caecum with complete confidence. In pathological cases it’s not always easy to distinguish small and large bowel simply on inspection of … Continue reading
Ultrasound elastography, or elastosonography, is increasingly available on high-end ultrasound machines;. At the most basic level USE gives an indication of tissue stiffness. This may be either in response to mechanical pressure (strain imaging) or to ultrasound-generated compression (shear wave elastography). Mechanical pressure in strain imaging is exerted externally (manually) or by internal changes due … Continue reading
It’s been an interesting empirical observation that acute haemorrhagic diarrhoea syndrome (haemorrhagic gastroenteritis) is commonest in small breed dogs susceptible to pancreatitis. A related phenomenon is the prevalence of gastrointestinal episodes in dogs with diabetes mellitus. ‘ In the light of the current advance in understanding the basis of canine hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, the well-recognized association … Continue reading
This is an idea that’s been gathering pace for a while. It’s a few years since I was in general practice but, even then, I was starting to find that having ultrasound in the consult room was immensely useful for a lot of cases as a triage tool and extension of the physical examination. The … Continue reading
Recently I’ve seen two three-month-old dogs with multiple (numerous) small portosystemic shunts in the absence of inflammatory liver disease. The patient whose images are presented below was examined on account of acute encephalopathy with bile acids >130 umol/l and ALT > 600 (ref <100). The same in video: This flow courses via colic veins to enter … Continue reading
The patient here is a 3 y.o. FN mini Schnauzer with bilateral ureteral calculi and plasma urea >40 mmol/L, creatinine 500umol/L. This patient very likely had pyelonephritis (UTI is present in something like 80% of dogs with ureteral calculi…much more so than in cats) although she lacked signs of sepsis. The interesting thing is … Continue reading
