Foot in Mouth

By Laura Stoeker

North Carolina State University

As a newly minted second year veterinary student and a recent hire as a technician at a local small animal clinic, I was hoping to pick up some hands-on veterinary skills on the weekends and some much needed cash. What is cash, you may ask? I often wonder myself since vet students don’t come in contact with it very often. That is an aside, however. On this Saturday in June I walked into the exam room and was greeted by a friendly middle-aged woman and her not-so-friendly elderly cat. Mary the cat had not been doing so well at home. She was an 18 year-old domestic short hair, thin, and ornery. At home, the owner complained that Mary would sometimes seem dizzy or disoriented. When placed on the clinic floor, Mary began circling. The circling was followed by wandering into a corner in the clinic and staying there.  18 year-old cat, circling, wandering into corners and staying there? I was pretty convinced that Mary had a brain tumor and was showing neurological symptoms.  After all, how many video clips of circling animals do first year veterinary students get to watch during neurology lectures? 5….10….20? Enough to recognize it when they see it, in any case!

                I gave a history to the veterinarian on call and mentioned my thoughts on the neurological symptoms. We entered the exam room and she proceeded with a head to tail physical examination. In the first few seconds of the exam, she had determined that Mary had no menace response and was incapable of tracking with her eyes. In fact, she determined that Mary was…..blind. Fortunately, the blindness was likely reversible as it was secondary to high blood pressure. But my chagrin was not reversible. Yes, I suppose that blindness could be another reason for a cat walking into a wall and wandering around in circles. I was short-sighted with my diagnosis, and my lesson for the day was a simple but important one: never turn a blind eye to alternative differentials.

Pfizer Summer Externship

By Valerie Koenig

Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine

Pfizer Summer Externship – Wisconsin

            As someone who grew up in suburban Massachusetts, I never thought that I would get the opportunity to do much with cows. But between my undergraduate experience and my employment on a local dairy farm, I have spent a lot of time getting to know, handling, and working with lots of cows. This summer, I got the opportunity to go on a one-month externship through Pfizer Animal Health to a town north of Madison, Wisconsin. It was a four-veterinarian, all dairy cattle medicine practice, two male vets and two female vets. Not only was it great to get different perspectives on food animal veterinary medicine from the men versus the women, but it was also great to get the advice and expertise of the newer versus the not-so-new graduates. The bulk of what we did was the usual weekly, or biweekly, ‘programs’ (i.e. herd checks) at each of the various client farms, but there was so much more than that. Lucky for me, they ended up being quite busy in the weeks I was there so I was fortunate enough to see a variety of different things and get hands-on experience. I got to help with many DA surgeries, I got plenty of practice pulling calves when called out for dystocia problems, I palpated hundreds of cows and really got a good base for that skill, my calf blood sampling skills improved dramatically, I got to help with a few uterine prolapses and cecal torsion surgeries, and I treated many cows for milk fever, ketosis, and acute toxic mastitis.

            Overall, this was an incredibly valuable experience for me, both as a future veterinarian and as an employee of a farm. Also, it was great to experience another region of dairies other than New England. Not that dairy farming is that much different from region to region, but there are many more farms out in the Midwest, comparatively to New England, and the infrastructure present to support that many farms is much more developed and significant. Having worked at a few farms before, my experience was mainly limited to milking, handling, and a minor amount of medical care. On this externship, my medical skills were greatly improved and for that reason alone, this externship was invaluable. Going into this externship I was already considering being a dairy practitioner and this experience did nothing but to further that desire. Though at times it can be frustrating and tiring, I love the way it integrates medicine with agriculture, improving production, and the food industry. This externship was a great opportunity and I was very glad I was able to do it.

Cases and Abstracts- see what fellow vet students are working on!

By Keiko Petrosky

Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine

ABSTRACT: EVALUATING GRADING SYSTEMS FOR ACCURATE PROGNOSIS OF CANINE CUTANEOUS MAST CELL TUMORS

Keiko Y. Petrosky and Barbara J. Davis

Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine (TCSVM)

Department of Biomedical Sciences, Section of Pathology

North Grafton, MA

Cutaneous mast cell tumors are common malignant tumors in dogs, composing 10% of all canine tumor diagnoses at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine (TCSVM), but commonly used histologic grading systems to assess MCT has limited application with respect to clinical outcome.  Recently, a 2-tiered grading system has been published to better guide prognosis.  Based on the newer criteria, we reclassified MCT with respect to outcome in (n = 402) TCSVM cases over 8 years and in (n = 54) cases with 48-month follow-up.  The Student t-test or Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine the significance of association between outcome and histological grade.  Significance of association between survival times and histological grade was analyzed using Kaplan-Meier survival curves and appropriate Cox analysis.  Although median survival time correlated with the 3-tiered assessments, most tumors (82%) were classified as grade 2 with a wide distribution of survival times.  After reclassification of all tumors to either low- or high-grade, survival times remained significantly correlated with tumor grade, including those previously classified as grade 2.  Most (94%) of the patients diagnosed with grade 2 tumors reclassified as low-grade and reached the end of the four-year time point; however the survival time for patients diagnosed with grade 2 tumors reclassified as high-grade varied significantly.  We are now evaluating additional biomarkers as tools to predict clinical outcomes.  Preliminary studies show that the traditional proliferation markers AgNOR and Ki67 and aberrant localization of KIT may be useful in further describing these high grade tumors.

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Veterinary Schools use SAVMA Grant funds for creative educational opportunities

Check out some of the fantastic things veterinary schools have been doing with grant money from SAVMA committees lately:

The Atlantic Veterinary College used a grant from SAVMA's Education and Professional Development Committee (EPDC) to host an Oil Spill workshop:

The Oil Spill Rehabilitation Course offered by the AVC Aquatics & Marine Wildlife
Club this spring was a great success! Dr. Helene Van Doninck, a TriState Certified
trainer from the Cobequid Rehabilitation Center in Truro, NS spent two days
teaching eager students, technicians and faculty about the realities of oil spills and
methods in rehabilitation of oiled wildlife. This included a one-day wetlab using
bird cadavers, which allowed the students to practice the handling and clean-up
techniques learned in the previous days lectures. The cost of Dr. Van Doninck’s
accommodations while at the course was graciously covered by a grant received
from SAVMA and the Education and Licensure Grant.

Michigan State University used an EPDC grant to hold a special lunch meeting on antimicrobial resistance

On October 12, the One Health Club at Michigan State's CVM held a panel on antimicrobial resistance
over lunch. Our panel consisted of Dr. Coretta Patterson, a small animal internist, Dr. Ron Erskine, a
food animal veterinarian with special interest in dairy cattle, Dr. Bo Norby, a veterinarian with special
interest in epidemiology and bovine tuberculosis, and Dr. Anthony Ognjan, an infectious disease
specialist in human medicine. These speakers came to answer questions and discuss the unique
challenges of antimicrobial resistance in their specific area of medicine. We were very happy to
welcome members of every veterinary school class and students from the MSU medical school to attend
and participate in asking questions of this panel.

We received very positive feedback from both those who attended and members of the panel.
Everyone seemed to learn a lot, especially with the presence of a human medicine perspective. We
all concluded that in order to understand such a large scale problem as antimicrobial resistance, the
participation of all areas of medicine (veterinary, human, environmental, etc.) is required.

The One Health Club would like to thank SAVMA EPDC for providing us with the funds to carry out this
informative and constructive meeting. We hope to continue to explore this topic in further panels.

Keep up the good and creative work! Thanks to the EPDC for offering the Education and Licensure Grant and to AVC and MSU's students for putting SAVMA's funds to good use! Keep an eye on your email for upcoming grant opportunities from SAVMA.

Return to Regularly Scheduled Blogging

Dear Readers-

We apologize for the interruption in posting this fall- rest assured we are now back to normal! Thank you for your understanding, your reading, and your creative submissions. :)

Thanks,

Ashley Smit

The Vet Gazette Editor