Dataset Information

Seizures in dogs under primary veterinary care in the United Kingdom: Etiology, diagnostic testing, and clinical management.

ABSTRACT: Background: Although seizures are common in dogs, limited published information is available on the classifications of seizures, diagnostic approaches, or clinical management of seizure-affected patients in the veterinary primary care setting.

Objectives: Explore seizure etiology, diagnostic testing, and clinical management of seizure-affected dogs in the primary care veterinary setting.

Animals: A total of 455?553 dogs in VetCompass.

Methods: Cross-sectional analysis by cohort clinical data.

Results: From 2834 incident seizure cases, we identified 579 (20.5%) dogs with epilepsy based on the International Veterinary Epilepsy Task Force (IVETF) classification system, including 484 (17.1%) with idiopathic epilepsy, 95 (3.4%) with structural epilepsy, and 179 dogs (6.3%) with reactive seizures. In their clinical first opinion records, 245 (8.6%) cases were recorded with epilepsy. Overall, 1415 (49.9%) cases received diagnostic evaluation equivalent to or higher than IVETF Tier 1 diagnostic testing. Being <12?years of age and being insured were risk factors for receiving IVETF Tier 1 or higher diagnostic evaluation among seizure cases. Anti-seizure drug (ASD) treatment was not prescribed for 1960/2834 (69.2%) dogs in association with the incident seizure event. Of the remainder, 719 (25.3%) dogs received 1 ASD, whereas 155 (5.5%) an ASD combination.

Conclusion and clinical importance: The differences between seizure classifications in the clinical records and those retrospectively assigned by the researchers support the need for clearer diagnostic guidelines in clinical practice. Insured dogs and dogs <12?years of age were more likely to receive advanced diagnostic evaluation, suggesting that financial and perceived prognostic factors influence case management.

SUBMITTER: Erlen A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7694840 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Seizures in dogs under primary veterinary care in the United Kingdom: Etiology, diagnostic testing, and clinical management.

Erlen Alexander A Potschka Heidrun H Volk Holger A HA Sauter-Louis Carola C O'Neill Dan G DG

Journal of veterinary internal medicine 20201031 6

<h4>Background</h4>Although seizures are common in dogs, limited published information is available on the classifications of seizures, diagnostic approaches, or clinical management of seizure-affected patients in the veterinary primary care setting.<h4>Objectives</h4>Explore seizure etiology, diagnostic testing, and clinical management of seizure-affected dogs in the primary care veterinary setting.<h4>Animals</h4>A total of 455 553 dogs in VetCompass.<h4>Methods</h4>Cross-sectional analysis by ...[more]

PMID: 33128852

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Project description:Diagnoses are widely used in both human and veterinary medicine to describe the nature of a condition; by contrast, syndromes are collections of signs that consistently occur together to form a characteristic presentation. Treatment of syndromes, due to either their lack of a clear biological cause or multiple causes, necessarily remains non-specific. However, the discovery of interventions may help refine the definition of a syndrome into a diagnosis. Within the field of veterinary behavioral medicine, separation related problems (SRPs) provide a good example of a syndrome. We describe here a comprehensive process to develop a diagnostic framework (including quality control assessments), for disambiguating the signs of SRPs as an example of a heterogeneous behavioral syndrome in non-human animals requiring greater diagnostic and treatment precision. To do this we developed an online questionnaire (243 items) that covered the full spectrum of theoretical bases to the syndrome and undertook a large-scale survey of the presenting signs of dogs with one or more of the signs of SRPs (n = 2,757). Principal components analysis (n1 = 345), replicated in a second sample (n2 = 417; total n = 762), was used to define the structure of variation in behavioral presentation, while hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis cross checked with the partitioned around medoids method was used to determine sub-populations. A total of 54 signs were of value in defining a latent structure consisting of seven principal components (termed "exit frustration," "social panic," "elimination," "redirected frustration," "reactive communication," "immediate frustration," "noise sensitivity"), which divided the population in four clusters (termed "exit frustration," "redirected reactive," "reactive inhibited" and "boredom" related SRPs) with 11 sub-clusters (3, 3, 3, and 2, respectively). We used a bottom-up data-driven approach with numerous quality checks for the definition of robust clusters to provide a robust methodology for nosological studies in veterinary behavioral medicine, that can extend our understanding of the nature of problems beyond SRPs. This provides a solid foundation for future work examining aetiological, and differential treatment outcomes, that will allow both more effective treatment and prevention programmes, based on a fully appreciation of the nature of the problem of concern.

Dataset Information

Seizures in dogs under primary veterinary care in the United Kingdom: Etiology, diagnostic testing, and clinical management.

Publications

Seizures in dogs under primary veterinary care in the United Kingdom: Etiology, diagnostic testing, and clinical management.

Similar Datasets

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