Quality of life

The hottest topic at last month's Western Veterinary Conference wasn't big cures or earth-shattering breakthroughs in disease prevention. Rather, it was improving the quality of life for aging, sick and injured pets.

New medicine could mean a longer, healthier life for pets with kidney disease.

More than 6,000 veterinarians covered a million square feet of Las Vegas trade show space and picked up the latest information at some 700 hours of scientific presentations. But the biggest audiences were at the dozens of presentations educating veterinarians on new pain-management techniques, with more than 100 veterinarians turned away from one such symposium.

At the Vet-Stem booth, Dr. Julie Ryan Johnson was spreading the word about a procedure newly available to treat dogs with some forms of joint disease - without drugs. Using stem cells extracted from a dog's own fat, veterinarians may be able to control pain and inflammation for as long as a year and a half. What's more, the therapy, which has long been used in equine medicine and is now being studied in people, may also improve symptoms caused by autoimmune disorders and liver disease.

"The dogs are doing things they hadn't done in a long time," Johnson said. "The stem cells make the dogs feel so good, they're tugging at the leash. Their owners are so happy to see them bouncing all around."

Quality of life is about more than managing pain, of course. For instance, hundreds of thousands of cats and dogs suffer from chronic renal failure and various forms of heart disease that leave them depressed, unable to exercise and unwilling to eat. Two new therapies - a drug newly available in the United States and a new supplement still undergoing testing - have the potential to make life something to enjoy rather than endure for countless pets.

In animals with renal failure, the kidneys become unable to filter toxins. As those toxins build up, cats and dogs feel extremely sick. Human patients with kidney failure often benefit from dialysis or transplants, but for dogs and cats, such procedures are often unavailable or unaffordable.

The new drug Azodyl, developed by Vétoquinol, uses specially formulated probiotic supplements to digest some of the toxins from the intestine, a process it calls "enteric dialysis." While Azodyl is currently undergoing an independent trial by the Veterinary Information Network, it's more promising than proven at this point. But if either Azodyl or some other method of enteric dialysis proves successful, it may allow pets to feel healthier and may even help reduce future damage to the kidneys. (Cat owners inter- ested in the ongoing study can get more information at www.vin.com/ART/Protocol. htm.)

And for dogs with cardiac illness, there's new hope, too. The drug Vetmedin (pimobendan), newly approved in the United States after eight years of use in Europe and Canada, isn't a cure for heart disease, but it can make dogs with some kinds of cardiac illness feel a whole lot more like living.

By increasing the flow of blood both to and from the heart and making it beat more efficiently, this drug can greatly improve the ability of dogs to enjoy near-normal activity and appetite levels. Some dogs even live longer when Vetmedin is added to their treatment plan, either because of the drug's direct effects or because their owners can delay euthanasia.

Not all of these procedures or therapies are right for all pets, of course. If you think your pet would benefit, work with your veterinarian to determine if these or other innovations can improve your pet's quality of life.