It’s normal to feel disappointment upon learning that your dog or cat was born with a congenital disease. The good news is that surgery can correct many congenital defects, giving pets a real chance at a normal, happy life or, at the very least, a better quality of life for the rest of their days. On this archived episode of Animal Airwaves Live, Dr. Kathleen Ham, a board-certified small animal surgery specialist, discusses some of the common congenital diseases she treats and how advancements in veterinary surgery have made clinical solutions possible for many animals.
Transcript:
DANA HILL: From WUFT-FM, this is Animal Airwaves Live, our weekly hour long show devoted to the discussion of the health and welfare of animals. I’m Dana Hill and I’m really happy you could tune in here on this Friday, the 19th of April, what we’re going to be talking about congenital disease in pets and congenital diseases in particular that may be treatable with surgical remedies. And I’m here happy to have as my guest Dr. Kathleen Ham from the UF College of Veterinary Medicine. Welcome to the program, Dr. Ham. Really glad to have you.
KATHLEEN HAM: Hi, Dana. Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here.
DH: When we talk about different kinds of, of ailments and maladies that our pets can experience, some of these are diseases that animals will acquire at some point in their lives, but some are diseases that they may be born with. Could you just, can you define what a congenital disease is?
KH: Yeah, I mean, you actually stated it pretty accurately already. When we break down the mechanisms in which a disease is created, we typically are going to ask ourselves, is this something that they’re born with, Is it a congenital disease versus something that’s acquired, where they’ve developed it at some point in their lifetime? Now, congenital diseases occur from a number of mechanisms, and a lot of that comes down to genetics perhaps and other in-utero things that can happen when the fetus is developing. But these congenital disorders are things that may affect their ability to thrive or survive. And in some of these instances, there are, like you said, remedies, surgical fixes where we can repair something and then that animal can have a normal quality of life and normal length of life.
DH: Well, that is an ideal scenario that they have a condition that is treatable with congenital disease. Are some of them hidden when these animals are young, or is it pretty easy to spot a problem in a young animal at maybe a first veterinary checkup?
KH: Yeah, that’s a great question. Some of these abnormalities are very obvious. So for example, a cleft palate. So a cleft palate is an abnormality where the roof of the mouth isn’t formed properly. And so now there’s communication between the nasal cavity and the mouth, the oral cavity.
KH: So it’s noticeable in, in these babies and puppies when they’re in kittens, when they go to nurse because a lot of times milk will come out of their nose or they’re unable to latch and nurse, especially if the cleft palate also involves the lip. So that is something that is noticed right away. And a lot of breeders are Very keen to actually check for this when animals are born, because you just open up the mouth and you can look in and you can see it with your eyeballs. Some congenital abnormalities are internal and they aren’t noticed right away. And sometimes there are things that can be detected on their first visit to the vet on a physical exam.
KH: So for example, there is a disease called a patent ductus arteriosus or a PDA. And when you listen to the heart on a physical exam, you can hear a very characteristic heart murmur that is generated from this PDA. So sometimes it’s not going to be noticed until they have their physical. And then there are some where they don’t. Those clinical signs and the abnormalities don’t show up until maybe a little bit later.
KH: And sometimes you have to run some lab tests in order to find the abnormality. So an example of that would be something like a liver shunt. So some animals are born with abnormal blood vessels in their abdomen by the liver. That means that the blood doesn’t go to the liver to get processed properly. And so that takes a little bit longer and some more tests to be able to figure out.
DH: All right, this is a really good introduction here. Let’s talk then about some of the most common congenital diseases. And even if some of these don’t have surgical remedies, we can at least know about them and then we’ll discuss in depth the ones that maybe have potential solutions.
KH: Yeah, absolutely. So I think liver shunts is a good one to start with because it is a very common disease. We can see it in both large breed dogs, small breed dogs, kitty cats. So we can see it pretty much in all the, you know, small animals that we typically have as companions.
KH: And what happens normally is blood that is draining the organs in our belly, like our stomach and intestines and things like that. That blood goes to the liver. And one of the main jobs of the liver is to then clean that blood, so to speak. And then that blood, once it’s been filtered through the liver, it goes back to the heart to get pumped as circulation. And when an animal is born with a liver shunt, there’s an abnormal vessel that shunts the blood away from the liver.
KH: So it. So all of the buildup of bad.
DH: Stuff doesn’t get filtered, it just bypasses the liver. It bypasses the liver altogether and goes to the heart. Yeah. Okay.
KH: It goes to the heart and then it gets pumped out to the body. Yep.
DH: Okay, that sounds like bad news.
KH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it can manifest with clinical signs that people may notice that the animal doesn’t grow. They oftentimes are kind of the runt, the smaller of the litter, and they may always be a bit more quiet and lethargic. And then in some cases, they might start to see some abnormal behavior. They might walk into a wall or walk in a circle, because some of these toxins that liver cleans will go to the brain and can cause some abnormal changes in the brain.
KH: And in extreme situations, they might even have seizures.
DH: Now, this disease, when you’re diagnosing it, it doesn’t require you to actually open up this animal. Right. There’s a way to see it without that.
KH: Yeah. So we typically start by running some blood tests. And when we find some of the abnormalities in our standard screening blood test, then we can do a special blood test that is called bile acids, where we actually – we don’t feed them any food and we measure it, and then we feed them some food and we measure the bile acids again. And what we’ll see is that those values are very high because the bile acids are typically going to the liver to be broken down, and so they stay high in the bloodstream.
KH: And so then we can measure that. And then once we’ve confirmed with the. With that blood test, then we can use special tests like a CAT scan or an ultrasound to actually look for it and find it.
DH: Yeah. So what does it look like? Can you actually see the vessel that is bypassing the liver?
KH: Yeah, yeah, we break it down. There’s two basic types that we see. We call them either outside of the liver, so extra hepatic, or in the liver intrahepatic. And so we can. If they are outside of the liver, we can see them with our eyeballs.
KH: And that makes that surgery pretty straightforward because we can go into the belly and we can identify the vessel. And we put a special device on it to allow that blood vessel to close down slowly and allows the animal to then have the blood go back to the liver nice and slow so that that liver can develop like it should have, and then circulation goes back to normal.
DH: Oh, so you can’t just, like, put a clamp on it and be like, you’re going to be good, it’s going to be fine. Because the liver is maybe not prepared to process that quantity of blood because it is used to having sort of a detour that the blood kind of avoids it.
KH: Absolutely, that is absolutely correct. So we have to do it kind of in a state slow, gradual way. And so there’s these special devices that have been made that allow that process to occur over several weeks to months.
DH: Is there any understanding of physiologically why this problem happens with liver shunts?
KH: Well, some of them are normal vessels that are, again, in utero. So when there’s a fetus, we don’t have a need for blood to go to the liver. So some of them can be just a leftover vessel from the fetus that never close down when they’re born. Whereas some of them, it just is a genetic abnormality and it’s an abnormal vessel that was made.
DH: Yeah, yeah. And the prognosis for animals that have liver shunts that receive this treatment. Did you say that there’s a name for this procedure?
KH: We just call it shunt attenuation or slow closure of the shunt, we call it. Yeah.
DH: The prognosis for these animals is pretty good.
KH: Pretty good. Yeah. We usually say that at least 85% of animals are going to have an excellent outcome.
DH: Yeah, that’s pretty good odds.
KH: Yeah, pretty good odds. Yeah. They’re going to be able to have a normal lifespan and a normal quality of life and not need any special medications or anything else like that.
DH: The consequence of not doing something about this, what would the consequence be?
KH: So, unfortunately, the clinical signs will persist. You can manage some of them with modifications to their diet and some medications, but those. The high levels of things in their blood can also cause things like kidney stones and bladder stones. And then again, they can start to have more progression of the neurologic signs and things like that. So typically, we expect that animals are only going to maybe live maybe five years or so if they don’t have their shunt fixed.
DH: Yeah, but it is a procedure that requires you going into this animal. Correct. An incision has to be made, some instruments go inside.
KH: Yeah, yeah. So we open their abdomen up. So they do have to have surgery, but it is one that we do very frequently, and their recovery from that surgery is usually only about two weeks of, you know, recovery, where we’re asking that they don’t have too much activity and that the incision stays clear and dry and things like that. Now, there is another type of shunt that occurs in the liver. So these are the ones that we call intrahepatic.
KH: And for those, we have a method to fix them that doesn’t actually require the surgery to go in the belly. What we use is a type of technique that’s called interventional radiology techniques. So we put a special catheter in a vein, and that allows us to put contrast into the vessels and we can use special wires and stents and then we can try to put coils into that shunt vessel to close the shunt vessel down. And all of that is done through these catheters that are put into the blood vessels. So that’s a neat way.
KH: And we do that when the stunts are in the liver because it is hard. We can’t see those ones with our eyeballs because they’re covered up by the liver. So it allows us to treat those in a less invasive way. That is pretty neat and is a technique that’s also done in people.
DH: And the animals that you’re treating for shunts, they’re young animals when they’re getting this procedure.
KH: Yeah, a good majority of them are going to be diagnosed within the first year of their life. Sometimes if they don’t have a lot of symptoms, they might be a little bit older. But it is common for us to treat them within that first year of life.
DH: Are we talking mostly kittens or puppies?
KH: We see this disease far more frequently in dogs and puppies, but we do see it in cats as well. But dogs tend to be more affected. And I would say the number one kind of type of dog are our toy breed or small breed dogs, like toy poodles, toy Yorkie, like Yorkshire terriers. Those smaller breeds are the ones that we tend to see most frequently.
DH: All right, so that was liver shunts. What else is a congenital disease?
KH: There’s another one that we see that’s really interesting. So there’s a couple different things that can happen. So again, when the fetus is in utero, there are again normal shunts that are occurring to allow the body to bypass areas. So another one is in the heart. And this is one that’s called a patent ductus arteriosus.
KH: And this is a vessel that is its purpose in the fetus is to shunt blood away from the lungs because the, you know, a fetus doesn’t need to use its lungs. But as soon as an animal or a person is born, then that vessel should shut down within a, the first few hours or couple days in theory. And sometimes it stays open and in that situation, then the blood isn’t going again, circulation is abnormal. So it is a vessel that we have to close down for them. And if we don’t, we know that they usually might die within the first year of their life.
KH: So it’s something that has to be treated. And again, with this type of shunt, we have another. We can approach it either in a non-invasive way where you can go in through a blood vessel and put a little device in that allows it to close down. Or we can open up the in between the ribs and dissect the vessel out and close it down. Now, this one is a shunt that we can close down immediately, right away, so we don’t have to do it.
KH: So when we close it down, we want to close it all the way and close it down.
DH: And the process of diagnosing this, is it similar where the animal will demonstrate some sort of symptoms, the clinical signs that alert you that there may be a problem?
KH: So a lot of times when they’re very young, there’s no overt clinical signs, and it’s something that is detected on their first puppy visit when they go in to see their primary care doctor. And the doctor listens to the chest and they hear this very loud murmur. And what they’re hearing is the blood going through that shunt vessel. Because it’s such a big shunt, you can hear this sound and it’s a very characteristic type of murmur. So when that is heard, then we can do X rays and you can see some changes that are typical.
KH: Now, sometimes, if it’s not noted, or maybe the animal didn’t get to see their primary care until they’re a little bit older, they can start to go into heart failure, which might look like coughing, exercise intolerance, lethargy and things like that.
DH: Yeah. So this is something that, if you see it, are you able to see it on some sort of diagnostic imaging?
KH: You can’t see the actual shunt on the X ray, but you can see it with an ultrasound. So when you look at the X ray, we can see some abnormalities that, you know, fit with that. But really what we do to confirm it is we do an ultrasound. Our cardiology team will use an ultrasound to do what’s called an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart. And we can see the vessel, you can see the shunt, and you can see the flow through the shunt.
KH: You can use Doppler to actually see the blood flow go through that shunt vessel. And once we see that, then we know it needs to have the procedure to have that, to have that closed.
DH: Right, right. And the process of doing this, you say you can do it in one shot. Right. You don’t have to gradually close this off. Does that mean that an animal that has this procedure will almost immediately feel relief from what was ailing it?
KH: Yes, it’s very, very neat because when you close it down, instantaneously their blood pressure improves, their heart rate will slow down. Their body instantly feels the benefit of it.
DH: Wow, that’s remarkable. Is this another, another disease, congenital disease that affects primarily dogs?
KH: Yes. We see it far more common in dogs, but we do see it in cats as well.
DH: And again, this is one that you’ll notice when these animals are young.
KH: Yep. This is one we notice very early on. And we try to get them fixed very early on, too, because we don’t want any secondary effects that hurt the heart or, you know, make them sicker. We want them to have surgery when they’re still very, you know, good candidates and they’re feeling good.
DH: Yeah. Well, this is, I think, a place where we’re gonna take our first break. I want to remind listeners, this is Animal Airwaves Live here on WUFT-FM. I’m Dana Hill. My guest from the UF College of Veterinary Medicine is Dr. Kathleen Ham.
DH: We’re talking about surgical treatment for congenital disease in pets. We’ll be back with more right after this. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Animal Airwaves Live here on WUFT-FM. This is our weekly hour long show devoted to the discussion of the health and welfare of animals.
DH: I’m Dana Hill and we’re talking today with Dr. Kathleen Ham about surgical treatment offering hope for animals with congenital disease. And we left off, Dr. Ham, we’ve been talking about two kinds of congenital disease that seem to be a kind of result of some transition not fully taking place between an animal that. Well, in systems that are designed to work when this animal is in utero, but are unnecessary after birth and, you know, like a liver shunt or so forth, will. Are there any other examples of that? Systems that are perfectly fine when this animal is in the womb but outside of its mother’s body aren’t necessary anymore.
DH: But maybe in some cases they hang around.
KH: Yeah. Another example I could think of for this would be one of the conditions that we call vascular ring anomaly. So vascular ring anomalies are where you have the body transitions from the fetus to the out of utero animal and their development happened in a way in which now the presence of the thing that went away is causing a major problem. So for vascular ring anomalies, normally that PDA that we talked about should be from an aorta that develops on the left side of the body. And some animals are born where their aorta is on the right side.
KH: And if that happens, when that PDA regresses, it will now sit on top of the esophagus and it makes it so that when an animal is born and they go to eat food and they’re eating solid food for the first time, the food can’t get past this band that is sitting on top of the esophagus because of the fact that the aorta is on the wrong side and the PDA closed like it normally should. So now, because their anatomy is just a little bit wonky, they can’t eat food. So they usually can drink their milk fine when they’re nursing, but now they transition to solid food and they can’t swallow the food. They just bring it right back up again because it can’t get past this band.
DH: Yeah. Okay. Well, this is something that probably requires really, really early intervention. These are going to be some of the smallest animals that there are. Right?
DH: I mean, at least. Well, I’m thinking about kittens being small, but I suppose that some kinds of puppies are a little bit bigger than kittens. Well, is this primarily a dog or a cat thing?
KH: We see it far more frequently in the dog as well. And I don’t know if that’s just because dogs are more popular maybe, or we just don’t see it as frequently in the cat. But yes, more common in dogs.
DH: And the course of treatment, as I said, probably needs to happen real early.
DH: Any imaging that you use to discover it.
KH: Yeah. Again, when an owner or a breeder notices that they can’t keep their food down, it usually starts with some X rays. And on the X rays you can see some changes that are very characteristic, but you can’t see the band. It’s not something that you can visualize on an X ray. So we will oftentimes do a CAT scan, which will allow us to identify all of the big vessels in the chest cavity to determine which type of vascular ring anomaly is present.
KH: So we know exactly what we need to do to go in and repair it. And you’re absolutely right. We want to do this early on, but we also want to make sure that they’re old enough to where it’s going to be safe to put them under anesthesia and do surgery. So usually we wait till they’re about three months old.
DH: So, I mean, until then they’re having what, just liquids, fluids, right?
KH: Yeah. They have to be on a liquid diet. And we often recommend that when they do eat, they eat standing upright. So we lift their bodies up so that we use gravity to help things go past the band.
DH: Oh, boy. Okay. So I can only imagine that the moms of these animals, they probably don’t appreciate that memo. Hey, you need to stand up. So this is something where these animals probably have to be bottle fed.
DH: Is that what’s happening?
KH: Yeah, bottle fed. There’s actually special chairs. They’re called bailey chairs. So if any of the listeners Google that, you can see there’s chairs that are made to help animals stay upright when they eat. Because there’s a number of conditions where that same recommendation is in place.
KH: And these chairs have been created for that purpose. But it is a lot of work. Generally speaking, if an animal is born with a condition, people are very committed and have to kind of make lifestyle changes and adjustments to help accommodate, to help make sure that they’re getting either the nutrients or the medications that they need to help their body overcome whatever that condition may be.
DH: Yeah, right. I mean, this is something that probably surprises many people to find out that their pet has this condition. But then one does need to step up and do the right thing, at least until the surgical intervention can take place. What are some other common congenital issues that you see that are able to be addressed with surgery?
KH: Another one that is pretty common is a cleft palate. And this is again, a common abnormality in people as well. In utero, when the face and the palate and all of the features of the head are kind of being formed, you have a right and a left side that come across and they kind of fuse in the middle. So this is an abnormality where that fusion does not take place. And it creates a hole or a communication between the nasal cavity and the oral cavity.
KH: So you can imagine that, you know, if you go to swallow and you’re. You didn’t have a roof of your mouth, then anything that you would try to swallow would go into your nose. And that, you know, obviously doesn’t feel good and also makes it so that it’s challenging for animals to get the nutrients and, you know, and food that they need to stay alive.
DH: Yes, that would be bad. This, though, I mean, it’s probably something that you don’t even need to do very extensive diagnostics. You just look and see that it’s like that, which, okay, that’s probably helpful, but the surgery involved to correct it must be a bit more expensive than simply closing off a superfluous vessel, right?
KH: Yeah, it is. It is a bit more challenging. And because of that, it is. It has a higher rate of complication. Because what we have to do is create some slaps of tissue to then fill in where that gap is so that we can reestablish separation of those two cavities.
KH: The good news is that the oral cavity is great for healing and there is usually enough local tissue nearby where we can create these flaps and close that up and again, instantaneous improvement. You know, these guys are going to feel so good right away and they’re going to be able to eat and, and, and have a, have a normal quality of life. The recovery period again is only about two weeks. So during that time frame, we have to be very cautious about what goes in the mouth. And you know, because we have to protect that incision.
KH: If the defect is very large, sometimes we’ll put a feeding tube in to bypass everything in a very temporary time frame. So just two weeks. But again, it’s a very treatable condition with a very good outcome.
DH: Yeah. The animals that experience this are, can I guess that it’s mostly dogs again?
KH: Mostly dogs, yep. But we do see it in cats.
DH: Okay, Any particular breed of dog?
KH: We tend to see it more common in like kind of broad headed dogs. So we see a lot of our brachycephalic dogs, bulldogs, we see chihuahuas. But we can see it in any breed really.
DH: Well, I mean, so far you’re describing ones that the good news is it seems like there is a ready solution. And sometimes these are pretty interesting and innovative solutions as with the shunt for the liver and the treatment for that. But they seem like the outcomes are very positive. I think it’s time for us to take another break, but when we come back, maybe we can discuss some that of the diseases for which maybe some of the treatments could be even a little bit more challenging because I imagine that there are some of those as well. Dr. Ham.
KH: Sure. Absolutely.
DH: All right, well, this is where we’re taking our next break. I want to remind listeners that this is Animal airwaves Live on WUFT-FM. I’m Dana Hill speaking with Dr. Kathleen Ham from the UF College of Veterinary Medicine. And we’ll be back with more right after this. Stay tuned.
DH: Welcome back to Animal Airwaves Live here on WUFT-FM. I’m Dana Hill speaking with Dr. Kathleen Ham today from the UF College of Veterinary Medicine. We’re talking about the surgical treatment for congenital diseases in our pets. Now we have spoken about a few procedures, Dr. Ham, that seem to offer pretty good and rapid relief for our pets with some congenital issues. And you mentioned some of the more common ones.
DH: As we go through the list, do these as they become maybe a little bit less common as problems less frequently seen, do the Treatments become any more complicated or difficult.
KH: Yeah. So, I mean, there are some congenital diseases that maybe aren’t going to be completely fixed. So some of the heart conditions that animals are born with are not. Are things that could be improved but not fixed. So an example is some animals are born with a condition called pulmonic stenosis, which is where a big vessel that is leaving the heart is too narrow.
KH: It should have a valve that functions to open, close, and it’s one in which it didn’t form. Right. And so the blood can’t leave effectively and it builds up pressure and it causes a lot of issues. So there are techniques that are cardiology team can do to help try to balloon or open that up and improve the flow, and it can have a definite improvement, but it’s not. We can’t completely fix it.
KH: So some of these congenital diseases are kind of like that, where it’s not something that is easily fixed. Another example might be hip dysplasia. Hip dysplasia is a condition where the hip joint doesn’t form properly. And so as a result, animals will get a lot of arthritis in that hip. And that hip can be painful.
KH: And so there is a lot of things that can be done. There are a lot of things that can be done in terms of managing the pain. But in that instance, sometimes it’s not effective enough and those animals may require maybe a total hip replacement.
DH: That’s interesting. Does that disease get discovered later than perhaps some of the other congenital diseases that you mentioned?
KH: Yeah. With hip dysplasia, we tend to see it in two phases. Sometimes we’ll see it in very young animals that have pain right away. But many times animals don’t. They have all these muscles and things that help stabilize the hip to where they don’t have a lot of pain right away until they start to get enough arthritis in that hip to where then the arthritis is really causing some more of that pain.
KH: And so sometimes with hip dysplasia, we may see them young and then we tend to see them old. So it’s kind of like new phases almost.
DH: With the older animals, does treatment become more difficult?
KH: That’s a really good question. So, generally speaking, we, you know, people always ask a veterinarian, how long is my dog going to live? Or, you know, how if I have a Labrador, how long do they live? And the, you know, the truth of it is we don’t know. You know, each animal is an individual and their lifespan is not necessarily only going to be related to their breed or their size.
KH: Or things like that. So when we do treat older animals, we look at their overall quality of life when we’re making recommendations for how to decide what’s best for that. When an animal is older, the majority of the time, if they’re otherwise healthy, their ability to recover from a surgery is pretty good. It is not that extremely different than, you know, a middle-aged animal. So again, you know, overall, even though the animal might be older, when it’s having that surgery, a lot of times, especially when we’re recommending a big surgery like a total hip, the improvement actually is, you know, pretty quick.
KH: And they’re older and they feel better than they did before surgery. So.
DH: Oh, okay, that is good. You know, so that’s a situation. This is, you know, I think about some of the diseases that we talked about early on as being, you know, involving vessels and so forth. What other kinds of congenital issues are. Are there any others that are sort of similar to the hip dysplasia thing?
KH: Yeah, I guess one that I can think of is, is hernias. So hernias are a pretty common congenital defect that animals can be born with. So, you know, they can. One of the more common spots that we see a hernia is at the area of the belly button. So it’s called an umbilical hernia.
KH: And sometimes hernias are small and sometimes they’re big. So there may be some very small hernias that we don’t even have to fix. And then when they’re bigger, we worry about what might actually get trapped in that hole that makes it, you know, we have to do surgery in order to repair it so that things can’t get trapped or, you know, lose their blood supply or things like that that are very, you know, very bad if that happens.
DH: Right, right. And how do you, how do you make a decision whether a hernia is small enough to ignore or big enough to warrant intervention?
KH: Many times it’s going to be based on palpation characteristics. So what I mean by that is what does it feel like? How big is it? Can I fit my finger through it? What do I feel?
KH: Can anything fit through it? Is there something already that already herniated through the hole? So, you know, that helps us determine whether. Whether or not we need to do surgery. If they’re very small, you know, less than, you know, like the half of your pinky width, you know, many times we might not even have to do surgery, but if it’s big enough to fit a finger, we’re more than likely going to recommend Surgery to have to make sure that nothing gets trapped in there at some point in their lifetime.
DH: Yeah. Let’s talk about some other congenital diseases as we go down the list. Some of these may be less frequently seen, I imagine.
KH: Yeah, yeah. Another. I think another really good one to talk about is a disease that’s called cryptorchidism. So, you know, we recommend and neutering animals just to help with pet population and, you know, to, you know, not have certain behavior issues and things like that. And some male dogs and cats are born where their testicle is not in the scrotum, so it never descended properly.
KH: And so sometimes it can stay in the belly where it develops, or sometimes it can get caught in the pathway between the belly and the scrotum. And whenever an animal is cryptorchid, we very strongly recommend removing that testicle because it is more likely to get testicular cancer, and it’s more likely to have issues like twisting or torquing. And so by taking it out, you’re removing those risks that are inherent to that testicle being in the wrong.
DH: Yeah, I wondered. I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if testicular cancer is a rather uncommon type of cancer in pets, at least relative to human beings.
KH: Yeah, we don’t see it too often. And, you know, part of that is because there is, you know, we do neuter our animals frequently when animals are left intact. We do see testicular cancers, although they tend to not be very aggressive cancer. And, you know, as long as they’re detected early. But what I find to be very challenging and interesting is sometimes people will rescue a dog, or they might get it from the pound.
KH: It will be already listed as neutered, you know, and so sometimes they don’t know that the testicles are internal. So sometimes we diagnose this later on in life. Incidentally, when a tumor does develop in that testicle.
DH: Interesting, interesting. And the treatment for that is surgical.
KH: Yep, yep. Take that testicle out. And with a lot of testicular cancers, just taking that testicle out can cure them.
DH: Interesting. Okay. And then the recovery period for that is probably not tremendously long, I hope.
KH: Yeah, no, it’s, you know, similar. Just about two weeks of rest, and overall, by the time, you know, by a couple days after surgery, it’s hard to actually keep them rested because they want to go back to being, you know, their normal, active selves again. So. But, yeah, very good. Very good outcome.
DH: And any other congenital diseases that you can think of, particularly any that affect cats more than dogs.
KH: I mean, there certainly are other, like, heart conditions that I’ve seen more so in cats that are very strange, but not that I can. Oh, you know, there is. Cats can get something called cerebellar hypoplasia, and it is where part of their brain doesn’t develop normally, and it makes them. It’s the part of the brain that helps coordinate your movement. So, if a cat has this.
KH: This condition, they are. When you watch them walk, they have. They have a lot of tremors and they’re. They can, like, walk that they don’t walk straight. They tend to walk sideways.
KH: When they go to eat, they. The motion, the coordination to get their head to their bowl is very off. So they, you know, they tend to have this really jerky movement and stuff, and there is no treatment for that.
DH: Yikes. Yeah. You know, it occurred to me, see, even early on in the show, that there would be some congenital problems for which there’s no practical solution. But I wonder here, in the little bit of time that we have left, whether you can imagine that moving forward there will be even more options, whether surgical or otherwise, to treat congenital problems in our pets.
KH: I think the interventions and the development of procedures and options in medicine continue to grow with the development of new technologies, and I foresee that options are going to continue to improve. You know, so several of the surgeries that we talked about today for the shunts and for the vascular ring anomalies, we’re even moving and trending towards using laparoscopes and thoracoscopes and trying to make things less invasive and, you know, have a smaller incision so that we have a faster recovery. And, you know, so I think as, you know, as time goes on, we’re going to continue to see more options develop to help make sure that these. These animals are able to get back to themselves and have the best chance at having a normal quality of life.
DH: And when we think about these diseases, these potential problems here that our pets might experience from a young age, maybe this speaks to the need for pet owners to establish a relationship with a veterinarian, especially at a young age with a pet, even though you think, oh, well, this animal’s so young, it’s. How much veterinary care can it really need? It’s, you know, it’s only a couple months old. It’s going to be in its best health ever, but there may be something that needs attention.
KH: Absolutely. I think one of the best things that any pet owner can do is to establish that relationship with the primary care doctor early on. Make sure that that pet is getting looked at and having a good full physical exam. Make sure that they’re listening to the heart and asking a lot of times, you know, just talking to the owner as well, you know, so people make sure they’re talking to their veterinarian and talking to the technicians and they’re talking about what’s going on at home, what you know. And if a pet owner, you know, notices something, even if it doesn’t seem significant to them, they should always make sure they’re communicating that.
KH: Because sometimes very subtle things, just even not wanting to eat, you know, something that is not super specific. But if it’s something that they notice frequently, they should definitely talk to their primary care team because these can be indications. And primary care doctors are very good at starting to recognize, you know, early on something that might not be right so that hopefully it gets diagnosed early and that treatment occurs early on.
DH: Well, that’s great advice, Dr. Ham. I really appreciate it and thank you for being with me on the program today.
KH: Thank you so much. It’s always fun to chat about these things with you.
DH: Kathleen Ham is from the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, where I also want to thank Sarah Carey and Amanda Buckley for their help with the program and to, of course, thank all of you for listening today. I hope you will join me next time for another episode of Animal Airwaves Live here on WUFT-FM.