Meet Virchow, the Panther Chameleon

Virchow is one of our winners in the Cutest Pet category! Thank you Linn Clarizio from the University of Minnesota for sharing this beautiful picture with us.

AAVMC Veterinary Health and Wellness Summit Travel Grant Recipients

The AAVMC veterinary health and wellness summit is a conference focused on addressing the unique mental health concerns and needs facing the veterinary community. This year the newly formed SAVMA wellness committee awarded travel grants to four students with the aim of reducing the stress associated with the expense of attending this conference. Below are the reflection statements of the four awardees for 2016. Each statement offers a unique perspective into what each individual feels is essential to their our wellness and essential to the promotion of wellness at their individual universities.

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Externs Abroad

Thomas Crook from the Royal Veterinary College submitted this winning piece about his time with camels in the United Arab Emirates. Who knew beauty camels could come with such a high price tag!?

After a tiring day of collecting and transferring camel embryos in the middle of a desert research complex, in the 35 degree heat of Al Ain, we were about to leave for the evening.  

On the way out of the complex, heading down a long tarmac road with desert and palm trees either side of us we got a call – an expensive camel was having a difficult birthing and the Bedouins were unable to assist her any further.  After rushing across the sand dunes in the 4x4 we reached the camel camp just in time.  The vet explained how uncommon this was in these hardy animals, and so this was serious.  As we approached the vet did a quick exam and noted that the calf’s legs had become tangled and jammed within the dam.  As we collected all the equipment from the car, the Bedouins managed to get the dam down onto her belly and we hooked up the calf to the chains.  After countless painstaking minutes of twisting, pulling and sweating under the hot Arabian sun, the calf was out!  After some anxious moments, the calf was lifting its head and breathing by itself – what a relief!  With the feeling of elation and adrenaline coursing through my body, we washed ourselves off and began to leave the camp, only to be greeted by a miraculous reward – meeting Nadiya, the world’s highest rated competition beauty camel worth a whopping $15,000,000, as she was leaving for a walk.  What a day.

"Clarity"

Erika Olney from Midwestern University provides us with a little "Clarity" and peaceful reflection on this manic Monday with this winning submission from our Photography category.

 

"Optimization of ultrasound settings for better determination of cystolith size in vitro"

Thank you to Lauren Kustasz from Michigan State University for sharing the abstract from her summer research project with Dr. Nathan Nelson DACVR....and CONGRATULATIONS on having it be selected as a winner in the cases and abstracts category.

Accurate estimation of urinary cystolith size is a critical factor in assessing the biological behavior of urocystoliths, their response to dissolution therapy, and their potential for removal by minimally invasive procedures. A previous study found that ultrasound, using a curved array transducer at a frequency of 10 MHz, overestimated cystolith size compared to other imaging techniques. The purpose of this study was to further evaluate ultrasonography as an imaging technique for measuring cystoliths, comparing transducer types, different frequencies, and the use of tissue harmonics imaging and spatial compound imaging using an in vitro bladder phantom model. Thirty cystoliths were imaged using combinations of the ultrasound variables mentioned. The accuracy of cystolith measurement was determined by taking the difference between the measurement obtained from the ultrasound image and the true size of the cystolith determined by a digital caliper. The accuracy of the measurements obtained from the linear transducer was significantly greater than the accuracy of the measurements obtained from the curved array transducer (p < 0.05). Measurements from the linear transducer showed a significant decrease in accuracy of cystolith size estimation when spatial compound imaging was used (p < 0.05 ). Independent of actual cystolith size, the linear transducer tended to overestimate cystolith size by 0.16 cm on average and the curved transducer overestimated by 0.43 cm on average. Subjectively, there were more artifacts seen in the images taken with the curved transducer and, especially with smaller cystoliths, these artifacts superimposed the cystoliths making them difficult to measure.

Dr. Nelson and the author with their ultrasound machine