Management of feline chronic kidney disease

Published on October 29, 2020   48 min

A selection of talks on Gastroenterology & Nephrology

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0:00
Hello, my name is Dr. Jessica Quimby, and I'm an associate professor of small animal internal medicine at the Ohio State University. Today I'll be discussing the management of feline chronic kidney disease.
0:13
The framework in which I'd like to talk about the management of feline chronic kidney disease is quite an important one for us as clinicians. When we're speaking to our client's about chronic kidney disease with their cats, it's really important to cultivate the bond with the client and also to really explain what the various therapies we might be prescribing for chronic kidney disease are. If the client does not understand why we're giving a particular medication, it's possible that the treatment plan will fail. Cats can be quite challenging patients in the veterinary setting because sometimes it can be difficult to give them medications. It's quite important that we consider the balance between quality of life and the therapies that we might be prescribing. Therefore, we typically have a fairly extended conversation with owners about whether or not they can actually give a medication, a pill or for instance, subcutaneous fluids to the patient. We'll be trying to create the best plan for that patient for management of their disease. With that in mind, it may be necessary to prioritize treatments and determine which ones might be best for that particular patient, depending on the different complications of chronic kidney disease that might be manifesting with their particular disease.
1:27
With this in mind, I'd like to introduce the concept of evidence-based medicine as it applies to the management of feline chronic kidney disease. We typically utilize different scales of evidence-based medicine to better define what type of studies have been done to tell us whether a specific therapy for the disease is effective. Throughout this presentation, you'll see small icons on the slides that will give you an idea of what evidence we have for a particular treatment. Whether it's a randomized controlled clinical study or whether it's a weaker grade of evidence where our recommendations for a particular therapy are based more on opinions or pathophysiologic concepts, and we don't actually have a clinical study for that particular therapy in the cat as a chronic kidney disease patient.

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