Sneak Peak

The advance review copy arrived today! I'm told that the official public release will be April 23.

Surgery For Dummies

When I came up with the post title I thought it was cute and absurd. The 'For Dummies' series of  books may have a breathtaking range, from ASVAB For Dummies ('Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery' - yeah, I have no idea either) to Zoho For Dummies, which is apparently a suite of cloud computing applications, but surely there would be no Surgery For Dummies. Ha ha, right? Well... it turns out that there actually is a Weight Loss Surgery For Dummies book, as well as Cosmetic Surgery For Dummies. One hopes these are written for the patients, not the surgeons.

I decided to stick with Surgery For Dummies, even though it now seems slightly less cute and absurd. My point was to highlight that there is no great mystery to surgery. A lot of surgery is much simpler than you might have thought. For many lay people surgery may seem like the pinnacle of a veterinarian's (or medical doctor's) specialized skill and knowledge, but I'm here to tell you that I could easily teach any of you the basics of the majority of the surgeries we do, and that I could teach you that with lessons that would fit on an index card. A small index card.

Basically most surgery can be boiled down to one of two processes - either you are removing something, or you are repairing something. The latter can be far more complex, but it actually only accounts for less than 10% of surgeries in a general practice. Most of the time you are removing something and that is usually not terribly complex. You could be removing testicles (neuter), ovaries and uterus (spay), a lump, a foreign object, or a stone, to give the most common examples. Here are the steps:

(NB: We are assuming the patient is already appropriately anesthetized.)
1. Use a scalpel to cut a straight line in the best place to find the thing you want to remove. Avoid cutting through blood vessels, but if you have to, tie them off with suture so they don't bleed.
2. Find the thing you want to remove.
3. Identify the blood supply to this thing and tie it off.
4. Remove the thing.
5. Sew up the cut or cuts you made. Depending on how deep the cut was, you may need to sew a few separate layers.

That's it. If you cut-and-paste those five steps, they'll fit on an index card.
If you have to cut into an organ to find the thing, such as a foreign object in the stomach or a stone in the bladder, then step 3 will be slightly different:
3. Cut into the organ containing the thing in the same manner as Step 1.

And the sewing is really just that - sewing. The thread (suture) may be special and we usually tie the knots using instruments, but the knots themselves are often just square knots. It's not hard.

All that being said, there are however two very important additional factors to consider before you dive into this. Ok, three if you count the fact that you need a license. And you should count that.

The first factor is that in order to "find the thing" and "identify the blood supply", and all that stuff, you do need to know the anatomy. Surgery is basically applied anatomy. (And, by the way, medicine is basically applied physiology.) Anatomy may seem complicated, but it's really just a lot of memorization. It helps to have a good visual memory, but it's not essential. And honestly, to perform a spay for example, you don't need to know the anatomy of the brain or the elbow or the lungs - just the abdomen and even there you don't need to know the name and location of every blood vessel running into the liver, you mostly just need to know what's right around the ovaries and uterus. Also, as soon as you start doing it, remembering becomes easier and easier as anatomy is something concrete that you can hold in your hands and see (unlike, say, the names of Prime Ministers you might have been forced to memorize in history).

This leads me directly to the second aspect, which is that it takes practice to become good at this. Duh. But this applies to veterinarians too! Regardless of how thoroughly a vet student has memorized the anatomy and the five points on my index card (or whatever notes they have from their surgery lectures), it will take them a ridiculously long time to perform their first spay. And they will be terrified and they will have to ask questions and get help and they will not be confident. At least one hopes that they will not be confident, as they shouldn't be, not yet. One of my classmates even fainted during their first surgery. Whump - hit the floor. They went on to become a fine surgeon. Eventually. With practice.

So learn the anatomy, keep the index card handy and practice, practice, practice under the supervision of someone who can swoop in should things go sideways, or you pass out. (And get a veterinary license.) And then you too can be a surgeon.

Vets Gone Bad

I recently participated in a brief Facebook conversation with some of my colleagues about the highest rated program on National Geographic Wild. I have not seen it, but I have certainly heard and read a lot about it. I may have the name wrong, but it's something like "The Appalling Dr. Pol".

Off stage, Vetography lawyers: "You can't say that! You know it's not called that. We'll get sued!"
Me: "Come on, get real. Nobody reads this blog." 

People appear to love this guy despite the fact that he is manifestly a quack.

Lawyers: "OMG!!"

You would be hard pressed to find a veterinarian who feels otherwise. But I'm not going to talk about the show or the details of his practice. I only mention him because his story is a useful illustration of the weakness of the professional disciplinary process.

One the hats I wear is as Chair of the Peer Review Committee (PRC) of the Manitoba Veterinary Medical Association (MVMA). I've been Chair since 2011 and sat on the PRC as a committee member reviewing complaints for about ten years before then. Veterinary medicine is like most other professions in that it has been accorded the right to self govern and self regulate.The reason professions are permitted to do this is that the government recognizes that only those who actually do the work are in a position to determine what is appropriate and what is not, and which errors are avoidable and which are not. Lay people are also appointed to the PRC to make sure that the public interest is kept in mind and that it doesn't evolve into an "old boys and girls club".

It's an interesting job but it's also a stressful job. Standing in judgment of your peers can feel like an onerous responsibility at times. A more subtle stress though is the knowledge that the worst offenders are getting away with it and that we are only seeing a skewed sample. This is because the process is necessarily complaint driven. Clinics are inspected for equipment, record keeping, sanitation etc, but nobody swoops in and looks over your shoulder to see how you are handling a case. There aren't the resources to do so and it would be pointless as you would be on your best behaviour when observed. The legislation states that for the PRC to investigate a complaint it must receive the complaint in writing. That's it, that's all. So we sit and wait for letters to arrive, our hands otherwise tied.

Think for a moment about your GP. Is he or she "good"? If so, how are you assessing that? Do you know enough about medicine to understand what is proper medical practice and what is not? Honestly? No, more likely, when you say that your doctor is good, you are saying that he or she is nice, and listens to you, and seems to care, and doesn't keep you waiting too long etc.. You have no real idea if the right test has been run and even if it was run, whether it was interpreted correctly. Your doctor could easily be incompetent and it would be very difficult for you to tell. Consequently you probably would not complain about your doctor to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, even if you had a poor health outcome. However, if you encountered a rude doctor with terrible bedside manner and had that same poor outcome, chances are higher that you would complain, even if he or she did everything right and the bad outcome was due to bad luck.

And so it is with veterinary medicine too. In all the complaints I have seen, the great majority have been due to poor communication by the veterinarian rather than poor skills or knowledge. Those of my colleagues who are a little more awkward around people, or perhaps are short tempered, but are objectively quite competent attract far more complaints than those who are charming and charismatic, but are objectively less competent.

The good news though is that given enough time, eventually the charming quacks trip up badly enough or often enough that they are unmasked and professional discipline can take action. As Churchill said regarding democracy, it's the worst system, except for all the others. Dr. Pol has been disciplined, albeit lightly.*




* And another more recent successful disciplinary case against him was reversed by a higher court in a ruling that effectively questioned the scope of authority of regulatory bodies. It doesn't impact us here, but it is interesting/frightening nonetheless.

Bee Med

One of the most fascinating aspects of this profession is the range of creatures veterinarians treat. Personally I have cared for animals from as small as a hummingbird to as large as a bull moose, although I will confess that both were while I was still in vet school. In my own pet practice the range is somewhat more restricted, running from mice to mastiffs. But my colleagues out there will attend to the full spectrum, from bees to whales. Whales, ok, you can probably picture that. Sort of. But bees? Surely I must be exaggerating or joking. I am not.

I am aware of at least three conferences this year that featured sessions on honey bee medicine. The Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium now has 345 American veterinarians listed in its database and there is also a British Bee Veterinary Association with a cool website (britishbeevets.com), as well as a Veterinary Invertebrate Society. The latter appears to be more focused on spiders and lobsters, but it is certainly interested in anything which creepeth or crawleth or buzzeth.

Ok, you can get the obvious jokes out of the way now. You must have a very tiny xray machine! It must be hard to give it a pill without getting stung! How do you take its temperature?! Har har. Nope, nope and nope. Bee medicine is like the medicine of many other food producing animals and is directed towards diagnosis and treatment of large groups at once rather than individuals. Dead bees are tested and then, if appropriate, something is prescribed for the entire swarm.

What has changed recently and made this something more than an obscure reference buried deep in the veterinary literature is a change in the laws governing antibiotics. Since 2017 in the US, and as of the end of this year in Canada, the regulatory authorities will require a veterinary prescription for most antibiotic use in bees. And a veterinary prescription requires a valid "veterinary - client - patient" relationship. Yes, the vet will have to have a relationship with the bee (bees). He or she will have to see them and make a diagnosis before anything is prescribed. This is because in the past bee keepers were able to buy the antibiotics over the counter and misuse, largely due to lack of knowledge and training rather than actual negligence, has led to antibiotic resistance and residues appearing in the honey.

So now vets will have to learn about "varroa mites" and "acarine mites" and "nosema fungus" and "small hive beetles" and "Israeli acute paralysis virus" and "black queen cell virus" and the wonderfully medieval sounding "chalkbrood" and "foulbrood", among many other bee ailments. Foulbrood, a highly infectious bacterial disease killing bee larvae, now affects about 25% of hives in Canada and is the main reason for antibiotic use. With correct diagnosis and careful prescription of appropriate antibiotics at the appropriate doses and times this can be managed better than it has in the past. Veterinarians to the rescue! Other veterinarians though - I'll stick to my mice and my mastiffs, and most of what's in-between. 

The C Word

Yes, cats and dogs get cancer. And turtles, and goldfish, and budgies, and rats. Actually, especially rats. As a very general rule most diseases exist in some form in most animals. We are all really remarkably similar under the hood. Yet people are sometimes surprised to hear it. And of course they are upset to hear it. It is the most feared diagnosis after all.

But there are some things you should know about cancer. First of all, it is not one disease, but rather it is a large family of diseases. Really whenever cells begin to divide in an uncontrolled fashion it is technically cancer. Everything from that gross little warty thing on the top of Buffy's head, right through to the aggressive volleyball sized thing that caused Duke's liver to fail. When these dividing cells don't destroy important tissues or spread through the system we call it benign cancer. When they do, we call it malignant cancer. Fortunately most cancers are benign. To reduce confusion a lot of us try to avoid calling the benign ones cancer at all and will refer to them as tumours or growths, but you should always ask if you are unclear – is it benign or malignant?

The second thing you should know is that even malignant cancer is not a death sentence. In human medicine many cancers are increasingly viewed as chronic diseases that even if they cannot be cured, can be managed well enough to allow a good quality of life for a reasonable length of time. That is our goal in veterinary medicine too, with a strong overriding emphasis on the quality of life aspect. Ultimately it does not matter what label we put on the disease, what matters is what we can do to provide a good quality of life. The cancer label is not helpful – there are many non-cancer diseases that are worse than many cancers. To be sure, there are too many cancers where we have to move rapidly to a euthanasia conversation, but my point is to not view all cancers the same way as there are some that can be easily managed to provide that good quality of life for some time.

I am sometimes asked, “Aren't we just prolonging his life?” If I'm in the right mood and if I know the client well, my answer to that is, “Everytime you take a breath you are prolonging your life!” It's true. The name of the game for every organism is life prolongation, just so long as it is without suffering. An animal doesn't know how long it's supposed to live. It has no thought for tomorrow and no anxiety when I tell their human companion that we can probably only keep it comfortable for another six weeks. Each happy day for an animal during those six weeks is a happy day. It's that simple. We just want to string together as many of those happy days as we can.

The other stumbling block in treating cancer in pets is the word “chemotherapy”. Some people react quite strongly when I suggest that, as if I've now crossed a line into ridiculous territory. But chemotherapy just means drugs to treat cancer, and much like the cancers themselves, there is a huge amount of diversity in these drugs. The most common treatment for a malignant bladder cancer is the same drug we use for arthritis (a non-steroidal antiinflammatory). Used for cancer it is “chemotherapy” (oooh... aaah...). Used for arthritis it is not. Exact same drug, exact same dose. Even aggressive chemotherapy drugs that can have really unpleasant side effects in humans often have far fewer side effects in dogs (cats are a different story). And we have the huge advantage that if one of our patients does become sick on the chemo, we can just stop. At least we tried. The bottom line here is not to dismiss chemotherapy just because of the scary word. It's not for every pet with cancer, but it is for some.

And finally, I am often asked about cause. People will say, “But we feed her the best food.” Or they will ask about the lawn chemicals or the water or the neighbour's treats. The truth is that none of these have any bearing. Cancer in pets (and in people, a few uniquely human high risk beahviours excepted) is mostly due to three things: genetics, age and bad luck. The genetics is obvious as certain cancers are far more common in certain breeds. This doesn't mean that Fido's parents or siblings had to also have it for it to be genetic, it just means that the risk for an individual in that breed is higher, like playing with loaded dice. The age risk should also be obvious. As time goes on your DNA accumulates damage and errors, like an old car or old house, and some of that damage and some of those errors could lead to cancer. But the biggest factor is simply luck. The body of even the tiniest animal is inconceivably complex. When you begin to look at that complexity it is amazing that diseases and disorders such as cancer aren't actually even more common. Be thankful for what works and don't be afraid of what doesn't. Sometimes it's not as bad as you think. Be like your pet and ignore the labels and words and just work to make each day as good as possible and then enjoy that day.

It's A Hell New World

When Isabel was little she wrote a short book called "Cat School". The first chapter was entitled, "Kitten Chaos - It's A Hell New World". Yes, she spelled "chaos" correctly, but was hilariously off with her attempt at "whole". Yet, weirdly she was also unintentionally perceptive.

Up until a month ago we had one dog and two cats. The two cats got along with each other well, united in their hatred of the dog, and the dog generally stayed out of their way, so it was a reasonably balanced little domestic ecosystem. Then Lily arrived. It's a hell new world.

Lily is an incredibly beautiful little Siamese cross and she is also the living embodiment of Leo Tolstoy's wise maxim, "It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness." Lily is badness, pure badness. From the very first day these few small ounces of cuddly fluff launched a terror campaign of such energy and ferocity that everyone - the cats, the dog, the kids, Lorraine and me - were caught completely unprepared. She moves so quickly that she appears to teleport. One second I am eating my dinner peacefully, the next second Lily's face is in my plate. Toss her off the table and instantly she is back. Again. And again. And again. One second Gabi is grooming herself peacefully, the next second Lily is on top of her, biting her ears. One second Orbit is munching his breakfast, the next second Lily is in his bowl and he is looking up me, mournfully. One second a picture is on the wall, the next second it is on the floor. One second a vase is... well, you get the idea.

As the internet people say, O... M... G... So, Lorraine and I are both veterinarians and between us we have 56 years of experience. Yesiree. For those combined 56 years we have given all sorts of calm, reasoned, sage advice to pet owners in similar straits. I am here right now to confess that none of this advice works in my own home. At least not yet. Doors are being kept shut to provide refuges to the other cats, toys are being accumulated at a manic pace, kids are being coached to occupy her, but it's still a demented circus around here. Probably the smartest suggestion we got was to get a second kitten to occupy the first. Intellectually I know that this would likely help, but I tell you, psychologically, it feels like we would be pulling the pin on a second grenade after stupidly doing so once already. Not happening.

So to bring this full circle, why did we get a kitten at all? Some of you have heard me advise that two cats is ideal and that three or more is pretty dicey, so what gives? We got her for Isabel. Isabel went from being that happy little girl, singing to herself and writing wacky stories, to being a teenager laid low by crippling anxiety and depression. She has missed so much school that the year is a wash-out. It's the last thing I expected and it's the hardest thing to watch. The sense of helplessness is immense. And then Lily came into Lorraine's clinic from a rescue shelter. Any other time I would have said no. Any other time. But Isabel was at her very lowest and the only spark I had seen in her in weeks was when she saw Lily's picture. And despite all her kitteny badness, Isabel loves her, really really loves her.

This isn't a tidy heart-string pulling story where the kitten saves the girl. If only depression were so simple. Isabel still has many bad days, but you know, there are some good ones now too. Is Lily responsible for any of this possible progress? I have no idea. For the rest of us it's still a hell new world, but for Isabel, hopefully perhaps the first steps to a whole new one.

Dogs Getting High

Ralph was certainly not himself. It was hard to tell how he actually felt, but the old shepherd was barely able to walk, stumbling and swaying each time he tried to take a step. And his eyes had a glassy far-away look.

"His arthritis is so much worse today!" Mrs Sorensen said, clearly upset and worried.
Although he was obviously having trouble getting up and walking, this did not look at all like arthritis symptoms.

"Have you been giving him anything for the arthritis?" I asked, a suspicion beginning to form.

"He gets his glucosamine and fish oil and then recently I started to give him a little CBD oil. Just a little doctor."

Suspicion confirmed - Ralph was stoned.

In theory this shouldn't happen with CBD, also called cannabidiol, because, in theory, it should not contain any THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis. But that's just in theory.

In one year CBD has gone from a "what's that" obscurity to an every day conversation with pet owners. Quite literally every day. I have been in practice long enough to have seen this phenomenon before. Just in recent memory vitamin E, eichinacea, grain-free diets and coconut oil have all had their moment in the sun as potential panaceas. The internet age spreads the word so much faster while amplifying the most improbable stories. In each case these remedies did not end up curing cancer, reversing kidney disease or noticeably "boosting the immune system", but each did end up finding a place in the array of options for some specific conditions in some specific patients. It's just a much smaller place than the enthusiasts had hoped for. If medicine were only so simple!

And so it will be for CBD oil. The range of disorders that people want to try it on their pets for is breathtaking, but the best evidence we have is that it might be useful for three things: epilepsy, nausea and, yes, arthritic pain. There are some problems though.

The first problem is that the research is lacking. There is a lot of work being done right now though, so hopefully we'll have some more clarity soon, but for the time being everything we know is based on anecdote and extrapolation from humans. There are plenty of examples in other areas of medicine where anecdotes and extrapolations have misled us, so some caution is warranted.

The second problem, as illustrated by Ralph's experience, is that quality control and regulation are also lacking. Contamination with THC is not that rare. I haven't seen numbers on that, but I did see another stoned dog with the same story soon after Ralph. Also, some reports indicate that the majority of commercially available CBD oil is contaminated with pesticides and other troubling substances. Google "contaminated CBD" if you're in the mood to be alarmed. Also, when tested, some of the products contain either very little or even no CBD oil at all. Moreover, all of this can vary from batch to batch, so just because Aunt Marge's corgi is like a pup again after three drops of "Doctor Good Earth's All Natural Holistic Small-Batch Artisanal CBD Oil", doesn't mean that your dog will have the same experience.

Patience people. My own dog is epileptic and I'll probably try CBD, but only once the science is in and the quality is truly assured (i.e. not just by the dude at the health food store). If your dog suffers from epilepsy, chronic nausea or arthritic pain and you feel like you can't be patient because nothing else has worked, please check with your vet first before winging it with CBD. New information is coming out regularly.

Ralph was better after about a day. Mrs Sorensen is going to be patient now.