Igor Yankin - Your Trusted Source for Veterinary Medicine

Mechanical GI Obstruction: Fake News?

A 2-year-old spayed female standard poodle was referred to a specialty private practice for evaluation of a suspected small intestinal mechanical obstruction. Two weeks prior, the dog started vomiting and stopped eating. The initial diagnostic work-up performed by her primary veterinarian showed normal bloodwork, and the dog received regular supportive care on an outpatient basis. Due to the presence of persistent vomiting and inappetence, the abdominal survey radiographs were performed, and they were consistent with the gastrointestinal obstruction as it was interpreted by a board-certified radiologist.

Do All Cats with “HCM” have HCM?

A 7-month-old female spayed domestic shorthair was presented to an emergency service (ER) for increased respiratory rate and effort. The cat got spayed at her primary veterinarian 6 days prior to this episode, and had been doing well otherwise up until the evening of presentation. The owner reported no previous medical conditions.

The initial triage examination showed tachypnea and moderately increased respiratory effort with increased bronchovesicular sounds in dorsal lung fields. No heart murmur or other abnormal physical examination findings were noted at that time. An emergency clinician performed thoracic radiographs (Figure 1 and 2) and point-of-care blood work that was within normal limits.

Radiographic confirmation of NG/NE tube placement in dogs and cats: Is it truly foolproof?

Nasogastric and nasoesophageal tubes are commonly used in small animal practice for short-term enteral nutrition. They are easy to place without general anesthesia, inexpensive and can be used for gastric decompression and drug administration.

Unfortunately, feeding tube misplacement happens much more frequently than the number of cases described in the literature. Although rare, misplacement may occur in advanced tertiary veterinary hospitals despite a strict adherence to the institutional policies and radiographic confirmation by board-certified veterinary radiologists (Rodriguez-Diaz JAAHA 2021).

Fetal Heart Rate in M-mode

In this video, I will teach you how to obtain an accurate fetal heart rate by using the M-mode (point-of-care ultrasound).

NOTE*** This was a GE Logiq e machine that I used to record this video. If you are using a different ultrasound machine, your abdominal preset may be set up differently or you may not have an HR (Heart rate) option. In this case, just measure duration of one cardiac cycle (from mid-systole to mid-systole or mid-diastole to mid-diastole) and divide 60 by the duration of the cycle and you will get the heart rate. The majority of ultrasound machines will use miliseconds (ms) to measure the duration of the cycle in the M mode. You will need to convert ms to seconds to calculate the heart rate. To do that, divide ms by 1000 = sec.

For example, in the video below the duration of the cardiac cycle in the first example was 214 ms = 0.214 sec. If you divide 60 by 0.214, the HR will be equal to 280 beats per minute, which is exactly the same HR as the calculated HR by the machine.

The acid-base analysis worksheet — DOWNLOAD the acid-base analysis worksheet [PDF] and watch FREE workshop on 10 essentials steps of acid-base analysis along with resuscitation of hypernatremic and hypokalemic patients with hypovolemia

PH-Induced Coagulopathy?

A 12-year-old female spayed Chihuahua was presented to the emergency service for evaluation of respiratory distress that had started acutely several hours prior to presentation. The dog began coughing at 10 am the morning of presentation, and was unobserved during the day while the owner was at work. At 6 pm the cough was worse, and the dog became dyspneic. The patient has had a chronic cough for a couple years but typically only has one coughing episode per day. The cough was a hacking cough that lasted about 10-15 seconds, and the dog has never been dyspneic before.