2018 - 87 (1)

Tail docking became a current practice in Belgian draft horses during the last decades of thenineteenth century. In this paper, a number of paintings and drawings by famous ‘animaliers’, in thiscase horse painters, are reproduced which convincingly demonstrate that heavy horses with intact tailswere in high esteem until about a century and a half ago. Amputation combined with partial resectionof the tail flexor muscles, fashionable in riding and cart horses of the upper class, became popular in thelate nineteenth century among leading draft horse breeders and owners. The trickle-down effect of thisfashion was the leading cause of change. This coincided with a triumphant period in the history of thishorse type. Later on, fashion changed to very short, nearly invisible tails. Resection of the tail flexormuscles became obsolete. Although forbidden by law, amputations are still carried out under medicalpretext: as a way to remediate badly healing tail wounds and sores.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition in cattle, as in humans. Successful sepsis treatment requiresa fast initiation of antimicrobial therapy with a broad-spectrum, bactericidal drug, administeredintravenously. However, the new legislation limits the use of critically important fluoroquinolonesand cephalosporins in food animal medicine, drugs which are considered highly effective for sepsistreatment and were previously frequently used for this indication. This article aims at providing anoverview of the current knowledge of sepsis in cattle to aid practitioners in adapting their decisionmaking process to treat sepsis. Sepsis incidence in cattle is likely seriously underestimated. Thisdisease is almost unexplored in cattle, which makes it particularly difficult to design species specificguidelines. Sepsis diagnosis by blood culture reaches sufficient accuracy with the current laboratorytechnology. When adapting this procedure to a field environment, difficulties might arise, andthe availability of adapted incubators in veterinary laboratories may be limited. However, thesedifficulties are likely to be overcome. Severe sepsis and septic shock are likely the only indicationswhere the ‘urgency’ criterion of the new legislation would apply, but it is important to realize thatalternative antimicrobial treatments with possibly similar efficacy are available.

A four-year-old male castrated German shepherd dog was presented with severe left frontleg lameness due to a fibrosarcoma lateral to the elbow. The ill-defined mass was not amendableto wide local excision and a curative-intent limb amputation was performed. Immediately postoperatively,closed incision management with negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) wasapplied to minimize the risk of postoperative complications. The incision line was covered witha PrevenaTM dressing attached to a NPWT pump set at a continuous negative pressure of -125mmHg. The dressing was removed 72 hours later. No wound complications were evident andfurther healing was unremarkable.

A descriptive retrospective analysis of 811 antibiograms in dogs and cats was carried out in orderto get a better insight into the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance against ‘critically important antimicrobialswith highest priority for human medicine’ in dogs and cats. A veterinary diagnostic laboratoryperformed antimicrobial susceptibility testing on 811 Escherichia coli isolates obtained fromveterinary clinical samples from dogs and cats in Flanders, Belgium. These isolates were mainly fromfecal (62.5%) or urogenital (30.5%) origin. A disk diffusion method with breakpoints provided by thesupplier of the antibiotic disks was used for antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The results indicatedthat 9.5% of the Escherichia coli isolates were resistant against or intermediate susceptible to marbofloxacine,16.7% to enrofloxacine and 15.7% to cefovecin. The unexpected difference in resistancebetween marbofloxacine and enrofloxacin may be, at least partially, explained by the different clinicalbreakpoints used to interpret the results of sensitivity tests for dog and cat isolates in both agents. Theobserved resistance in this study might be related to the regular use of fluoroquinolones and third generationcephalosporins. Therefore, the use of ‘critically important antimicrobials with highest priorityfor human medicine’ remains an important issue in small animal veterinary medicine.

A general overview of tricuspid valve dysplasia in dogs is presented in this review. This congenitaldisease has been described in numerous large dog breeds but especially the Labradorretriever is predisposed. The condition is relatively uncommon, with a prevalence of approximatelyseven percent of all congenital heart diseases in dogs. The asymptomatic phase may lastfor several years and depends on the severity of the valve malformation. In the clinical phase,exercise intolerance, fatigue, anorexia, cardiac cachexia, dyspnea and signs of right-sided congestiveheart failure can be present. Echocardiography including Doppler imaging is warranted toconfirm the diagnosis. Curative treatment involves surgical valve replacement but is technicallychallenging and still in its experimental phase in dogs. As such, treatment in dogs involves theadministration of supportive medication once the dogs develop symptoms of congestive heartfailure and consists of diuretics, ace-inhibitors and positive inotropic drugs.

Equine dental pathology and its diagnosis have been described in part 1 and 2 (published in 2015and 2016 respectively) of this series of articles on equine dentistry. In this third and last part, differenttreatment options are discussed and the cases, in which they can be applied, are highlighted. Alongwith the growing interest in equine dentistry and the increasing knowledge about it, the treatment optionsand the available instrumentation have strongly evolved over the years. This enables both thefield veterinarian and the more specialized veterinary surgeon to perform efficient treatment of a widevariety of dental pathologies.