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aimvet.chAIM-Vet offers Internal Medicine and Oncology consultations. These fields and their main reasons for consultation are explained on this page. All of our prices are available on request by email or via the contact form.
This wide discipline is frequently defined as the most complete of the medical specialties. In veterinary medicine, Internal Medicine includes gastroenterology, hepatology, endocrinology, pneumology and other respiratory conditions, hematology, immunology and uronephrology. Going beyond the framework of organ medicine, it focuses on the diagnosis and global management of diseases with a predilection for systemic diseases. Thus, knowledge in cardiology, neurology, oncology, ophthalmology, dermatology, osteo-articular pathology, reproduction and behavior are essential.
Internal Medicine is the specialty of challenging diagnostics and management of animals suffering from multiple diseases, general illnesses and chronic or recurrent diseases. The chronicity of clinical signs generally implies an evolution of more than 15 days. This field requires very good synthetic capacities in complex situations, in order to set up hierarchical diagnostic or therapeutic strategies.
General signs
Persistent or recurrent fever, anorexia, weight loss, depression, lethargy, weakness, jaundice, anemia, abdominal distension, edema, increased water intake and increased urine output (polyuro-polydipsia), increased appetite (polyphagia)
Gastroenterology
Swallowing difficulties (dysphagia), regurgitation, salivation (ptyalism), chronic vomiting, chronic diarrhea, chronic constipation, difficulty or pain in passing faeces (tenesmus, dyschezia), blood in stools (melena, hematachezia)
Cardio-respiratory diseases
Chronic cough, panting, exercice intolerance, collapse, chronic sneezing or reverse sneezing, chronic or recurrent nasal discharge, high blood pressure
Uro-nephrology
Recurrent cystitis, difficulty or pain in passing urine (dysuria, stranguria), blood in the urine (hematuria), incontinence, acute or chronic kidney disease
Endocrinology
Poorly controlled diabetes mellitus, thyroid dysfunction, adrenal dysfunction (Cushing’s syndrome, Addison’s disease, hyperaldosteronism, pheochromocytoma, etc.)
Various signs
Blood test abnormalities (hematology, biochemistry, hormonal exploration…), bleeding or coagulation disorders, unexplained complaints or pain, polyarthritis, neurological disorder (seizures, gait disorder (ataxia), disorientation, tremors …), vulvar discharge, mass or lump, systemic infectious disease (leptospirosis, leishmaniasis, ehrlichiosis, FeLV, FIV, FIP…)
Oncology is a field of veterinary medicine which is becoming more and more important and for whom knowledge has been constantly evolving over the past 10 to 20 years.
The word “cancer” is always associated with a strong affectivity from the owner but also from the veterinarian because everyone is one day directly or indirectly touched by this terrible diagnosis. Who says affectivity says partiality and bias. However, the veterinarian must maintain all his professionalism, rid the owner (and himself!) of his stereotypes in order to avoid condemning an animal for the wrong reasons. The owners are also increasingly asking for specific cancer diagnoses and treatments.
Grégory K. Ogilvie, one of the best-known oncologists, says that “cancer is the most curable of all chronic diseases in pets”. The diagnostic process in Oncology consists of finding, confirming and determining the limits (staging) of a cancer. Finally, the last step is knowing how to announce cancer, a particularly delicate step if you consider that there is no good way to reveal such news.
Once the diagnosis of tumor has been established in an animal, three questions must be answered: can it be treated, should it be treated, how to treat it?
Only the owner can answer this question. To achieve this objectively, the veterinarian must provide him available scientific data, and to do so, answer the following two questions: can we? How?
The answer to this question contains two parts: can the animal support the treatments and are these technically possible? Indeed, it is essential to assess the feasibility of treatments taking into account other possible diseases of the animal. The aim of the treatments is certainly to increase the lifespan of the animal, but also and above all, to increase its quality of life. Finally, some of the treatments will require special surgical as well as medical expertise.
There is no one single therapeutic approach. Ideally, the veterinarian should propose the first choice therapeutic option, which will depend on the type, location and extent of the cancer. If this option imposes particular constraints such as the prior management of an unsatisfactory clinical condition, the high cost, the lack of availability of the technique or the cumbersome nature of the technique, other options must be considered, explaining pros and cons compared to the “first-choice” option. More and more new cancer therapies are available, called “targeted” therapies, which offer the advantage of causing fewer side effects than conventional treatments such as chemotherapy.
Some treatments can “shock” by their heaviness (invasive surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, etc.). However, many animals tolerate them very well. It is essential to consider that only one thing is prohibited: the suffering of the animal. Balanced nutrition and pain-killers are the basis of the management of a cancer patient.
This frequently involves finalizing the diagnosis and developing the various therapeutic strategies in the following cases: