White Cross Vets has announced the launch of a new practice designed to offer patients, clients and staff the best possible environment, whilst at the same time being environmentally-friendly.

Located in Wolverhampton, the new practice uses different lighting in different parts of the building: 'cool' for public areas such as the waiting room, 'comfortable warm' for the dog, cat and exotic wards and daylight for clinical areas. The LED system uses 60% less energy than conventional lighting and requires half the number of fittings. In addition, following research in the USA at Banfield, consulting rooms are fitted with dimmable lights to ease stress for patients and clients during euthanasia.

Other highlights include a specialist cat ward that White Cross says exceeds the iCatCare Cat Friendly Clinic requirements. The ward includes raised cat kennels that are carefully positioned so that cats can’t see each other, to further minimise stress-levels. There are also separate, sound-proofed wards for dogs and exotic pets.

To reduce anxiety in dogs and cats pre- and post-surgery, the practice uses pheromone diffusers and specially composed music played in the wards.

Managing Director, Tim Harrison said: "We’re delighted to launch our latest practice in Wolverhampton, which is our most environmentally-friendly yet. We’ve incorporated the most successful attributes from all of our 15 other UK practices into its design, and it’s immediately proving popular with clients and most importantly their pets."

Clinic Director James Millington says: "The facilities and attention to detail in this practice are the best I’ve ever seen. There’s no doubt this will translate into the quality of care that our clients receive and their pets deserve."

Boehringer Ingelheim is hosting a live webinar at 7:30pm on Thursday evening (16th April) in which a panel of business experts will offer advice as to how practices can navigate the coronavirus pandemic. 

The webinar will consider questions such as how practices can maintain turnover whilst sticking to the government and regulator guidelines, and how this can be done without compromising the customer experience. 

Hosted by Past President of the British Veterinary Association Gudrun Ravetz, three additional veterinary business experts - Brian Faulkner, Alison Lambert and Alan Robinson - will come together to share their advice on how to minimise the impact that coronavirus has on the practice, the team and a practice’s clients.

Veterinary professionals can submit questions directly to the panel who will answer them during the live event.

To register for the webinar, visit the Boehringer www.boehringer-academy.co.uk.

Early-bird registration is now open for BSAVA Congress 2024, which will return to Manchester Central on 21st-23rd March 2024. 

Open to everyone in the profession, Congress '24 will include over 130 hours of CPD across 32 different modules covering topics such as advanced diabetes, dermatology, nursing clinics, EDI and more.

The programme format caters to a variety of learning styles, from lectures and panel discussions to interactive sessions and free CPD workshops. 

There'll be over 120 exhibitors in three commercial exhibition, offering insights into some of the latest industry innovations, from pharmaceuticals to cutting-edge equipment.

Andy Green, Chair of the Congress Committee said: "We know it's a significant commitment for individuals to give up one to three days, plus travel time, to join us, and we don't just aim to educate; we want our attendees to enjoy the experience.

"Our aspiration is not just to meet their expectations but to exceed them.

"The veterinary profession faces challenges, but we have so much to celebrate, and what better place to come together with many like-minded individuals to remind yourself why you wanted to be in this profession in the first place." 

Early bird registration is open until 31st January, and prices start at £93 +VAT for BSAVA members for a one-day pass.

www.bsavacongress.com

John Swinney MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, oficially opened the award-winning £10.5 million Small Animal Hospital for the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Glasgow today.

Designed by Archial Architects, the Small Animal Hospital provides state of the art services for animal owners and referring practitioners throughout Scotland and Northern England, including advanced diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical techniques.

Archial's design for the Small Animal Hospital has already won a string of awards, including the prestigious RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award, a RIBA Regional Award and the Supreme Award from the Glasgow Institute of Architects.

Archial Architects has confirmed that it is to donate £2,500 from the Andrew Doolan Prize fund to the Small Animal Hospital.

HRH The Princess Royal has opened the Animal Health Trust's new cancer treatment and research facility in Suffolk.

The facility has been purpose-built to treat horses, dogs and cats with cancer. It will also assist in furthering understanding of the disease in animals.

Peter Webbon, Chief Executive of the AHT, said: "2012 marks 70 years of the AHT fighting disease and injury in animals, and the addition of the Cancer Centre is a landmark achievement in our history. We believe this is the first facility of its kind in Europe, purpose-built to treat horses, dogs and cats with cancer. We now have a short commissioning process to undertake but anticipate welcoming the first patients through the doors in early 2013."

The Kennel Club Cancer Centre at the AHT houses a linear accelerator (pictured right) and brachytherapy machine used in radiotherapy treatment, along with a 16-slice CT scanner to aid radiotherapy planning.

The new facility complements the AHT's existing cancer treatment options of surgery and chemotherapy meaning the Suffolk-based charity will be able to offer each and every patient the very best options for their specific case, whatever the diagnosis.  With one in four dogs and one in six cats developing cancer at some time in their life the new centre will help many more animals fight cancer.

Peter Webbon, added: "It was thanks to a generous donation from the late Tom Scott, a long-term supporter of the AHT, that we were able to start this development. His donation, along with that from many other AHT supporters, and an interest-free loan of £1.5 million from the Kennel Club has meant this ambitious project has come to fruition so quickly."

It has taken just over a year to build the Cancer Centre which contains more than 2,600 tonnes of concrete and has eight-feet wide solid concrete walls.

On opening the facility, HRH The Princess Royal, President of the AHT, said: "This Cancer Centre is an exciting development at the AHT and will make a real difference for animals with cancer, here and now. It will improve the chances, for many animals, of beating this pernicious disease.

"Countless other horses, dogs and cats across the world with cancer, who will never be seen by an AHT clinician, will also benefit from knowledge gained from research in The Kennel Club Cancer Centre at the AHT."

The AHT has a strong history in cancer research and the Kennel Club Cancer Centre will enhance the charity's well established cancer research programme. Knowledge gained through the treatment of animals in the facility will contribute to the study of cancers, their causes, early diagnosis and treatment, and ultimately hopefully the prevention of some forms of the disease.

Steve Dean, Kennel Club Chairman, said: "I am very proud to be here today to celebrate the opening of the Kennel Club Cancer Centre. Thanks to the expertise available here at the Animal Health Trust, the Cancer Centre will provide advanced techniques for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, to the benefit of many animals.  It is exciting to consider how synergy between the Kennel Club Cancer Centre and the Kennel Club Genetics Centre can help to further the understanding of the inheritance factors that influence the development of cancer."

Locum vets Cristiana and Marco Tudini have had the holiday of a lifetime after winning a competition run by the recruitment consultants, Recruit4vets.

The couple, who came to the UK in 2006, were amongst 1000 people who entered the draw last year, when Cristiana was working for Companion Care in Folkestone.

Kelly Worrall from Recruit4vets said: "Our team called Cristiana on a typical day in the practice to deliver the news. She was obviously thrilled to get the call. Not only did we help find Cristiana her dream job, we sent her on a dream holiday too!"

Cristiana said: "My husband and I went to New York at the beginning of December. New York was full of festivities and was magical to go around Christmas time, we even visited Rockefeller Centre and watched the lights and singers. My husband and I are vegan, so we were delighted to find NYC filled with vegan restaurants and fast food outlets, we didn’t stop eating the whole trip! 

"New York City was absolutely amazing, this really was a dream come true!"

The Equine Veterinary Journal has published a free special collection of new research on Equine Grass Sickness this month.

Four separate studies are included in the collection, reporting novel risk factors for the disease, identifying key differences between EGS and botulism (questioning the hypothesis that EGS is caused by neurotoxins from Clostridium botulinum), reporting a novel diagnostic technique and showing the value of monitoring weight loss to help predict whether individual horses with chronic EGS are likely to survive.

The publishers say that despite more than 100 years of research, supported predominantly by the The Moredun Foundation Equine Grass Sickness Fund (www.grasssickness.org.uk), the cause of EGS remains unknown. Since it almost exclusively affects grazing horses, a pasture derived neurotoxin is implicated. EGS causes gut paralysis as a result of damage to parts of the nervous system that control involuntary functions. Acute and sub-acute EGS is invariably fatal while around 55% of chronic cases can survive and return to a useful working life. The UK has the highest incidence of EGS in the world; indeed it is estimated that the disease kills between 1 and 2% of horses in the United Kingdom annually. Cases are more common in spring.

In terms of risk factors, the study ‘Equine grass sickness in Scotland: A case-control study of environmental geochemical risk factors’ suggests that the high incidence of the disease in Eastern Scotland may be partly associated with the particular composition of macro and trace elements in the soil in the fields on which horses graze. Further work is required to determine whether interventions to alter concentrations of particular elements in soil could potentially reduce the risk of EGS.¹

A second study identified key differences between EGS and botulism, which questions the currently favoured hypothesis that EGS is caused by neurotoxins from Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium which commonly inhabits soil. The study ‘Equine grass sickness, but not botulism, causes autonomic and enteric neurodegeneration and increases soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment receptor protein expression within neuronal perikarya’ suggests that EGS is unlikely to be caused by neurotoxins from this bacterium and concludes that further investigation of an alternative cause for EGS is needed.²

While the majority of horses with EGS can be readily diagnosed by experienced veterinary surgeons, some cases present a diagnostic challenge. Indeed the only way to definitively diagnose the disease in a live horse is to demonstrate the characteristic degeneration of nerves within biopsies of the intestine. Unfortunately these biopsies can only be collected by performing abdominal surgery under general anaesthesia. In the study ‘Neuronal chromatolysis in the subgemmal plexus of gustatory papillae in horses with grass sickness’ characteristic degeneration of nerves was identified in small biopsies collected from tongues of EGS horses during post mortem examination. Examination of these biopsies accurately differentiated control horses from EGS cases. While further validation of this technique is required, it could potentially provide a relatively non-invasive method of confirming the diagnosis in a live horse.³

While around 55% of horses with chronic EGS survive, objective criteria for predicting survival of these cases are currently lacking. The study ‘Bodyweight change aids prediction of survival in chronic equine grass sickness’ reported that non-survivors had greater rate and magnitude of bodyweight loss than survivors. Survival prediction curves were published to allow veterinary surgeons and horse owners to use body weight data to help determine whether an individual horse with chronic EGS was likely to survive or die.⁴

Professor Bruce McGorum, Head of the Equine Section at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies & Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, has been leading much of the research. He said: "Given that our recent research suggests that EGS is unlikely to be caused by neurotoxins from Clostridium botulinum we are now moving on to determine whether EGS is caused by ingestion of mycotoxins produced by pasture fungi. We are very pleased that The Horse Trust (www.horsetrust.org.uk) has provided funding for this three-year investigation."

Professor Celia Marr, Editor of the Equine Veterinary Journal said: “While the cause of equine grass sickness continues to evade us, these papers present an optimistic step in the right direction for the eventual prevention of this dreadful disease. It is only with the support of the Moredun Foundation Equine Grass Sickness Fund and more recently that of The Horse Trust that our world-leading veterinary researchers are able to continue to unravel the mystery.”

The EVJ equine grass sickness collection can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/2dC7Drr

References

1. Equine grass sickness in Scotland: A case-control study of environmental geochemical risk factors C. E. Wylie, D. J. Shaw, F. M. Fordyce, A. Lilly, R. S. Pirie, B. C. McGorum
2. Equine grass sickness, but not botulism, causes autonomic and enteric neurodegeneration and increases soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment receptor protein expression within neuronal perikarya B. C. McGorum, S. Scholes, E. M. Milne, S. L. Eaton, T. M. Wishart, R. Poxton, S. Moss, U. Wernery, T. Davey, J. B. Harris, R. S. Pirie
3. Neuronal chromatolysis in the subgemmal plexus of gustatory papillae in horses with grass sickness B. C. McGorum, R. S. Pirie, D. Shaw, N. Macintyre, A. Cox
4. Bodyweight change aids prediction of survival in chronic equine grass sickness R. C. Jago, I. Handel, C. N. Hahn, R. S. Pirie, J. A. Keen, B. E. Waggett, B. C. McGorum

Diagnostics testing company MI:RNA has developed an AI-powered test for Johne's disease in cattle, with a claimed accuracy of 73% sensitivity, 71% specificity and 72% accuracy, which are expected to improve with further research. 

MI:RNA says that current testing practices for Johne’s disease mean that identification of the disease is difficult, with current sensitivities of around 10-40% and little to no ability to diagnose early stages of infection.

The loss of productivity due to Johne’s to the UK agricultural economy is estimated to be in excess of £10 million annually.

MI:RNA says it is the first diagnostic testing company to use microRNA assay technology.

MicroRNAs are newly discovered biomarkers that manage the immune system and immune responses and act as regulators for disease progression or resolution.

This, says the company, makes them excellent biomarkers of disease, and when combined AI, can significantly improve identification of Johne’s and other complex conditions, and predict disease outcomes.

MI:RNA says this development will allow veterinary surgeons, farmers and pet owners to test for a variety of conditions, not just Johne’s.

Target areas include heart and kidney disease, osteoarthritis and bovine tuberculosis, along with effective general wellness and preoperative screening.

Eve Hanks, founder and CEO of MI:RNA, said: “Increasing market and global pressures on bovine protein production means that animal health has never been more important.

"This is a key area of research and development for MI:RNA and biomarker science combined with our unique AI-powered modelling, means that we can significantly improve animal health and reduce greenhouse gas output.

“The breakthrough that we’ve already achieved in Johne’s testing is unparalleled, and has provided an opportunity for MI:RNA to pitch our business concept in the USA to the The Kansas City Animal Health Summit.

"Following our presentation, we have now progressed through to the final selection stage for European Innovation Council funding for our work on Johne’s disease. 

“In terms of future applications, microRNAs can assist with vital drug discovery, progressing future diagnostic testing and understanding disease pathways more effectively.

"We’ve already made remarkable progress and we know that with the continued backing of our tech, AI and health experts and with the correct funding, that we can do so much more.” 

The RCVS Disciplinary Committee has dismissed a case against a Nottinghamshire veterinary surgeon, having found not proven the charge that he had caused, allowed or failed to prevent a potential breach of the Rules of Racing of the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB).

During the re-scheduled, three-day hearing, the Committee heard that Dr Gary Samuel was on duty on 10 October 2009 as the GBGB licensed track veterinary surgeon at Nottingham Greyhound Stadium. When the trainer came to collect her dog for the race, she discovered a biscuit in his kennel in the paddock area, in potential contravention of the rules of the GBGB, which do not allow greyhounds access to any food, drink or other substance after weighing in, prior to a race. She reported this discovery to the paddock steward. The dog was withdrawn from the race, so there was no prospect of prize money. The trainer, despite her unblemished record, was put at risk of disciplinary action by the GBGB, which could have resulted in the loss of her training licence and livelihood. Following the events of 10 October, the GBGB held a disciplinary hearing, at which Dr Samuel was disqualified indefinitely from holding a GBGB licence and fined £2,500, and the matter was referred to the College.

The RCVS Disciplinary Committee confirmed that it should not be bound by the GBGB decision, and that the charges laid against Dr Samuel must be resolved on the basis of the evidence before it. Both Counsel for Dr Samuel and the College urged the Committee to have close regard of CCTV footage from 10 October, which showed Kennel 21 where the dog had been placed and the biscuit found. From evidence given by the paddock steward and the trainer, the Committee accepted that the kennel was clean when the dog entered at 5.30pm, so the biscuit must have been introduced between 5.30pm and 9pm, when the trainer collected him for the race.

The footage available to the Committee from Nottingham Race Track was only four-and-a-half minutes long. The Committee was concerned that there were almost three-and-a-half hours of footage that it had not been shown and that, in addition, witnesses were not able to state that they had viewed the remainder of the footage. In those circumstances, the Committee considered that the footage available must be of the best quality to allow it to reach a sure conclusion as to what exactly Dr Samuel may have been doing in his position close to Kennel 21. From the quality of the footage available, the Committee was not able to be sure.

Speaking on behalf of the Disciplinary Committee, Vice-Chairman Professor Sheila Crispin said: "The fact remains that the Committee cannot be sure that the Respondent caused the biscuit to enter Kennel 21, [so] finds the charge against the Respondent not proved."

Dr Samuel therefore remains on the RCVS Register and is entitled to practise.

Eastcott Veterinary Referrals has found an imaginative use for the perspex safety screens introduced at the start of the pandemic: for patient restraint. 

Specifically, they're using them as a sheep race of sorts, for patient restraint during fluoroscopic examinations.

Eastcott says the transparent barrier helps to keep patients as close as possible to the practice’s mobile image intensifier, while also limiting any sudden movement. This significantly improves the quality of images taken and reduces the amount of time taken per examination.

Nicholas Taylor, referral radiographer at Eastcott came up with the idea. He said: “Unlike us humans, animals don’t understand the need to remain still and the process of getting these images was becoming quite challenging and time-consuming. Often the length of the process would make the animal anxious and we would inevitably be going in circles.

"The idea came about when we were discussing how we could replicate the x-ray process in the human world, where machines are often very close to the patient’s body.

"We had a few spare desk barriers in the hospital and decided to give it go. We were so pleased at how easy it made the entire process, reducing the amount of time per exam, improving the quality of pictures and ultimately putting the patient at ease since they can see what is going on around them.”

VetCT has announced that it now offers unlimited specialist teleconsulting support to help general practitioners with the management of chronic cases.

The VetCT teleconsulting service, which can be accessed via the web and an app-based platform, provides advice from a specialist team.

Typically advice is provided as a written report within 24 hours, with options for text chat or telephone conversations when vets may want to discuss the case with a specialist.

The service can be accessed on a pay-per-case or subscription basis.

Until now, follow-up advice had been capped at two weeks.

Internal medicine specialist and Head of Teleconsulting at VetCT, Kate Murphy, said: “We are delighted to be extending our support for cases that require ongoing management, such as endocrine disorders or complex wound management.

"Our clients have fed back how valuable it will be to partner with us longer term for these patients, to provide guidance and reassurance that care is being optimised and help to keep owners engaged and happy.”

welcome.vet-ct.com/sales 

Horiba Medical has announced it is the official exclusive UK distributor of the fully automated Vet abc Plus+ veterinary haematology analyser from scil animal care company GmbH, Germany.

According to the company, the compact Vet abc Plus+ provides a complete blood count (CBC), including 4-part white blood cell (WBC) differential, from only 10 µl of EDTA whole blood, in only 60 seconds.

The Vet abc Plus⁺ provides pre-installed settings to analyse samples from dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, mice, rats, cattle, pigs and sheep. For dogs, cats and horses, the Vet abc Plus⁺ provides a 4-part WBC differential blood count, including a differentiation of the leucocytes to identify lymphocytes, monocytes, granulocytes and eosinophils. Results are available in 60 seconds on screen or can be automatically printed out and transferred to the practice information system or clinical notes. For ease-of-use, the Vet abc Plus+ also incorporates a self-contained reagent and waste system which provides a clean operation whilst being easy to replenish.

Borne from an existing manufacturing partnership, scil and HORIBA Medical already have over 6000 veterinary haematology analysers placed globally. Horiba says the new UK distribution agreement enables UK veterinary professionals to not only procure the Vet abc Plus+ analyser, but also receive expert service and support directly from the manufacturer HORIBA Medical and its team of UK specialists.

For more information, visit: www.horiba.com/uk/medical