Veterinary Clinical Reference
Look up any drug or condition.
Evergreen, evidence-based hubs on the drugs, conditions, and species you manage — continuously updated and cited at every claim.
Serpentovirus (Nidovirus) Infection in Snakes: PCR Testing, Quarantine, and Clinical Management
Serpentovirus is an important differential for respiratory and oral disease in captive snakes, but PCR positivity does not by itself prove active disease. Review sample selection, serial result interpretation, quarantine, supportive care, and coinfection assessment.
Read →Mycobacteriosis in Ornamental Fish: Diagnosis, Control, and Zoonotic Risk
Ornamental-fish mycobacteriosis is a chronic granulomatous disease caused by nontuberculous Mycobacterium species. Review tissue selection, acid-fast stain limits, culture versus sequencing, treatment uncertainty, biosecurity, and zoonotic risk.
Read →Metaldehyde Toxicosis in Dogs and Cats: Diagnosis and Treatment
A clinical reference for metaldehyde molluscicide exposure in dogs and cats, covering recognition, decontamination, tremor and seizure control, monitoring, ILE limitations, prognosis, and emerging extracorporeal evidence.
Read →Hedgehog dermatophytosis (Trichophyton erinacei): diagnosis, treatment and zoonotic risk
A clinical reference on Trichophyton erinacei in hedgehogs: why most positive animals carry no lesions, why Caparinia tripilis does not rule it out, how to sample spines, the itraconazole-versus-terbinafine evidence, and the owner-handling advice that prevents human tinea.
Read →Hamster cheek pouch impaction and eversion: differentials, evacuation, reduction and resection
A pink mass at a hamster's lip is usually an everted cheek pouch, but impaction, abscess and carcinoma present the same way. A GP-facing reference on discriminating the five presentations, evacuating and lavaging an impacted pouch, reducing versus resecting an eversion, and anaesthetising a sub-150 g rodent — with hamster-specific dose figures and an honest account of how thin the clinical evidence base is.
Read →Cholecalciferol rodenticide toxicosis in dogs and cats: dose calculation, monitoring, and treatment
A GP-facing clinical hub for vitamin D3 bait ingestion in dogs and cats: how to convert a 0.075% bait to a mg/kg dose at the desk, the 0.1 and 0.5 mg/kg decision thresholds, why hypercalcaemia is delayed and prolonged, decontamination and recheck intervals out to 72-96 hours, calcium-lowering agents with sourced doses, and how cholecalciferol differs from bromethalin and anticoagulant baits when the class is unknown.
Read →Wobbly hedgehog syndrome: working the differentials before you call it
Wobbly hedgehog syndrome is confirmed only on postmortem CNS histopathology, so every antemortem diagnosis is one of exclusion. A practitioner's workup for the ataxic African pygmy hedgehog: presentation and tempo, the treatable differentials to rule in first, what imaging and bloodwork can and cannot resolve, what the pathologist needs, prognosis, and what the literature does and does not establish about heritability.
Read →Bromethalin toxicosis in dogs and cats: dose calculation, decontamination and prognosis
No antidote, no antemortem test that returns in time, and a latency that makes an asymptomatic patient unreassuring. Convert bait grams to mg/kg of bromethalin, decontaminate from 0.1 mg/kg in dogs and 0.05 mg/kg in cats, and repeat the charcoal.
Read →Chytridiomycosis in captive amphibians: Bd, Bsal, and the treatment pathway
Clinical pathway for chytridiomycosis in a captive pet or collection amphibian. Covers why Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and B. salamandrivorans are not interchangeable pathogens, the keratinised-epidermis mechanism that kills by disrupted cutaneous osmoregulation and asystolic cardiac arrest, qPCR skin-swab diagnosis and what a negative swab does not rule out, published itraconazole bath protocols with the species and life stages they apply to, Bsal-specific temperature and combination therapy, and quarantine, disinfection and jurisdiction-dependent reporting.
Read →Mycoplasma pulmonis in pet rats: chronic respiratory disease, treatment, and prognosis
Murine respiratory mycoplasmosis is managed, not cured. What Mycoplasma pulmonis does in the pet rat, why it almost never acts alone, how far diagnostics honestly take you in a live patient, the doxycycline and enrofloxacin doses exactly as the Merck professional rodent chapter and Schoeb's rodent respiratory review publish them, the ammonia and co-infection factors that drive severity, and how to frame prognosis and euthanasia with the owner.
Read →Cisapride in cats and dogs: regulatory status, dosing, and cardiac safety
Cisapride has the broadest prokinetic reach of the drugs in common use, which is why it anchors medical management of feline constipation and early megacolon. It is also an unapproved, compounded-only drug with no controlled clinical trial in cats, a fifteenfold spread across published dose recommendations, and a hERG-mediated cardiac liability characterised in cats and dogs only at grossly supratherapeutic doses. This hub separates trial evidence from expert recommendation, quotes every dose figure from the source that printed it, and sets out where cisapride stops working — a failure of enteric nerves, not of muscle — and surgery begins.
Read →Battery ingestion in dogs and cats: emergency triage, removal and monitoring
Battery ingestion is two different emergencies and the radiograph decides which. A disc/button cell lodged in the oesophagus is an electrolytic burn that begins within minutes — canine experimental data show necrosis reaching the inner muscular layer at 15 minutes, and the trachea by one hour — and demands immediate endoscopic removal. A chewed cylindrical alkaline cell is a caustic-plus-foreign-body problem on a slower clock, where ulceration appears at 1-2 hours but the full extent of injury can take 24 hours. Covers first-two-minute triage, the injury mechanisms that separate the two cell types, what not to do (emesis, activated charcoal, oral acid), the radiographic double-rim and step-off signs, oesophageal versus gastric management, and how long to watch for delayed perforation and stricture.
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