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Inflammatory bowel disease is one of the most common causes of chronic diarrhea, vomiting, weight loss, and appetite changes in adult and senior pets. and while numerous animals can experience occasional digestive upset, it is the chronic digestive issues that are so essential to diagnose correctly so that suitable and early treatment is achieved. As general practitioners, we are often able to resolve greater than 80 percent of acute digestive tract problems with symptomatic and/or dietary therapy without a lot of diagnostic testing.
However, when these issues become chronic, a definitive diagnosis is critical to a successful treatment outcome. In such cases full medical workups including physical exams, CBC/chemistry blood work, urine analyses, x-rays and often abdominal ultrasounds are required. depending upon the results of these initial baseline tests, even more testing is done such as thyroid or adrenal gland testing, 6-8 week strict dietary trials in case food allergies are involved and even an endoscopic exam with stomach or intestinal biopsies, as done in people. Biopsies become especially essential to distinguish inflammatory bowel disease from cancer of the digestive tract such as lymphoma, if the initial workups and/or dietary trials fail to resolve the symptoms.
I’ve seen too often numerous chronically ill animals treated symptomatically with Prednisone for stomach or bowel disorders, often initially helping the situation tremendously, only to have the conditions later relapse with much much more intense symptoms. often these animals have had cancerous lymphoma from the outset, and animal guardians ought to at least be given the option of a definitive diagnosis and treatment early on with their chronically ill pet. This is even much more critically essential for animals with digestive symptoms, as those animals with gastrointestinal lymphoma (which can imitate symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease) that are first treated with Prednisone only are much much more challenging to treat with effective chemotherapy protocols if diagnosis is delayed at a later date.
CancerDigestive Problems