We Help Treat Diseases Through Early Detection

With medicine, one of the enigmas faced is having a healthy patient with obscure problems. This can also be the case with your pets. They may appear to be apparently healthy yet suffer and have a hidden diseased condition. If left undetected, these issues may cause serious life threats.

To identify such lethal problems, blood tests are essentially the most evident tools for identifying diseases in their initial stages, so that they can be tackled when they are treatable.

This is one reason why a veterinarian would definitely recommend a blood test of your beloved animal friend to screen their bodies for any potentially harmful problems that would be developing. This would help them pin-point medical issues with your pet before it leads to something incurable or serious. Blood tests would also help to ensure that you pet is healthy enough to take certain medications without allowing for any internal injuries, such as kidney or liver problems, hence reducing the worry of any underlying unhealthy cause. Also, a clear blood test report helps you understand affirmatively what actually represents good health for your individual pet.

You might wonder why your dog needs an early-detection blood work. To answer your worries, it is because when a basic laboratory testing is done as part of your pet’s annual health exam, the values and readings are tabulated. A record is maintained which helps your vet review your pet’s health records at each subsequent check-up and spot any abnormalities or trends or any fluctuations which may indicate that a serious disease is developing inside the pet’s body.

As a non-professional, you would be wondering if an Early Detection Blood Work is terrifying. Assuredly, it is not. Actually, it is a routine blood test which tests for a complete blood cells count of the animal and develops a biochemical profile based on all the readings and counts obtained. The amount and concentration of electrolytes in the animal’s blood is checked, and the blood is screened for any indications of heart worm ehrlichia, anaplasmosis, and Lyme (tick borne) diseases. All these and other experiments evaluate the kidney and liver functions, ruling out just anemia and certain cancerous types. Overall, about 20 tests are accounted for on the blood sample obtained from your pet.

It is significant to note here that a modified and more elaborate form of Blood work detection also exists, namely the ‘Senior Early Detection Blood Work’. This differs from the ‘Regular Early Detection Blood Work’ in a lot of aspects, one of which is that the former’s wellness profile includes everything from the regular blood work plus a thyroid screening in much more detail. The total number of tests exceeds forty.

The blood analysis done accordingly helps your vet spot serious health fluctuations even before they began to show. A standard blood test panel for dogs and cats would check for any routine problems, and thence is truly significant.

Now, let us have a look at what the common blood tests would include.

One: It may include a CBC, or Complete Blood Count. This would yield sufficient information as to the types and the amount of blood corpuscles in your pet’s blood. A low level of red blood cells would indicate anemia, for instance, and high number of the defensive blood cell corpuscles signify an infection, a chronic inflammation or a cell-engulfing disease process.

Two: A Blood Chemistry profile would be obtained as a result of the blood test. This is evidently significant as it helps to evaluate normal organ function, and pinpoint any abnormalities in, for instance, the functions of liver and of kidneys. It also depicts the amount of electrolytes present in the blood, the amount of blood sugar level, and screens for clues and any endocrine secretions that can be called as an anomaly. Any disorderly result will redirect your vet’s attention to that specific area of investigation for your pet, and they can then further diagnose that problem to obtain a clearer picture of the disease or problem addressed.

Third: A t4 would measure the level of thyroxin in blood and screen the pet’s blood for hyperthyroidism or hyperthyroidism; the former being the case when the amount of the concerned hormone is too low in blood, and latter being the condition when it exceeds the normal blood thyroxin level.

Fourth: This is a heart-worm test, which as inferred from the name, detects if any evidence of heart-worm disease is present.

Fifth: An Ehrlichia test which detects the associated deadly disease, and which is transmitted by ticks.
Sixth: The Lyme disease test, which is quite a popular one, and signifies another potentially fatal problem, also transmitted by ticks.

Now that we realize the importance of characteristic blood tests, it may be important to learn why should you even go for these tests? One of the primary reasons, arguably true, is that our pets cannot consciously tell us if they are feeling unwell, and what if something is wrong with them. This is basically where the laboratory testing is entirely helpful as it aids us in screening out any internal problems our animal might be facing, which it is unable to show its uneasiness about. Blood tests help us in detecting, treating and hence preventing some potentially deadly diseases and illnesses. As already mentioned blood tests also help the vets pinpoint the areas of interest to investigate and further elaborate upon the problem an animal would be facing. This can be very helpful in case of older and sick animals especially, as it will help unveil the root cause of their ever time illness or weaknesses. Liver and Kidney problems are a common health-atrophy cause with animals, and blood tests will help reveal any indications to these problems. Additionally, this would explain why your pets are suited to certain medications and why they might be allergic to such medicines. And even if your pet is healthy, a regular check-up and regular blood test will help with the evident records and establish a frontier to judge the health of your pet from. This explains why blood tests are a mandatory part of your pet’s annual examination.

Finally, we will discuss how the blood samples will be collected from your pet for evaluation. Usually a sample is extricated during a scheduled office visit once a year, but in case of suspicions, your vet or registered veterinary technician would want to collect blood samples from your pet over a course of weeks or months. Your pet might need to be in the hospital for a few hours or so, during which they might be anesthetized, and the sample taken.

It is no surprise that the lifetime of usual animals kept as pets is durably short. This means that any disease they catch would progress at an exponential rate if left untreated. A dental problem you would ignore may be the onset of a heart, liver or kidney disease for your pet. You may ignore your dog having problems with getting up in the morning or pacing at night or even forgetting where the door is, and you may call your cat lazy for refusing to jump onto the bed or couch anymore, but medically, these are signs for the onset of physical deterioration for these animals. Appropriate and timely treatments may completely cure your pet, or extend their health and lifetime by certain treatments and medications. Even amongst the different breeds of animals, the rate at which a sickness progresses is highly unpredictable. In such scenario, your vet is your best guide at how to keep your pet happy and healthy and how to afford it a worthy lifestyle.