DVMs can earn up to 12 CEUs and technicians can earn up to eight CEUs.
Dr. Carol Reinero received her DVM degree from UC Davis. She completed a rotating internship at Texas A&M University and returned to UC Davis to complete a Small Animal Internal Medicine residency and Ph.D. in immunology. Dr. Reinero is currently a professor and the Director of the Comparative Internal Medicine Laboratory at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She has published over 130 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts.
This lecture will cover bacterial pneumonia etiology, focusing on the two most common causes: community-acquired infections and aspiration pneumonia. Preventative strategies, diagnostics, and treatment will be discussed. Strategies for dogs with and without clear evidence of a bacterial infection will be described, including controversies surrounding length of antimicrobial administration and metrics to monitor response to therapy and guide length of treatment.
Respiratory diseases make up a large proportion of veterinary visits in both dogs and cats, with clinical signs including nasal discharge, sneezing, stertor, stridor, wheeze, cough, tachypnea, labored respiration, exercise intolerance, and cyanosis. Medical management can at times be challenging and strategies are diverse depending on the underlying condition. In this lecture, pharmacologic management of several broad categories of disorders will be discussed, with an emphasis on therapeutic goals.
Pulmonary hypertension—abnormal increases in pulmonary vascular pressures—is a hemodynamic and pathologic state that occurs secondary to a wide variety of cardiac, vascular, respiratory, and even systemic disorders, and causes morbidity and mortality in dogs. Material from the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine’s recent guidelines for diagnosis, classification, treatment, and monitoring of pulmonary hypertension in dogs will be presented. This lecture will focus on causes of pulmonary hypertension that are unrelated to left ventricular dysfunction or valvular disease.
Advances are being made in all fields of veterinary medicine, with respiratory medicine being no exception. This lecture will focus on updates on relatively “new” respiratory disorders, inclusive of diagnostic modalities that have allowed for identification and characterization of these discoveries. Five major groups of disease will be covered: dynamic upper airway disorders, aspiration-related respiratory syndromes, bronchiolar (small airway) disease, interstitial lung disease, and pulmonary vascular disorders.
Cats with respiratory tract disorders can present to veterinarians for a variety of clinical signs, including nasal discharge, sneeze, reverse sneeze, noisy breathing (snoring/stertor, stridor, wheeze), cough, alterations in respiratory rate or effort, and respiratory distress. The most urgent of these clinical signs is respiratory distress. Because of their often-fragile state at the time of presentation, rapid assessment to streamline the diagnostic and therapeutic approach is needed and will be covered in this lecture.
Canine and feline respiratory disease can result in a constellation of clinical signs that impact quality and quantity of life. The approach to dogs or cats showing respiratory signs is to first localize the clinical signs to the region of the respiratory tract that is affected, followed by targeted diagnostics and therapeutics. In a case-based fashion, this lecture will provide some challenging clinical case scenarios.
Dr. Whit Church earned his DVM degree from Oregon State University, completed a one-year small animal rotating internship at Cornell University, and completed his cardiology residency at both the University of Illinois and the University of Pennsylvania. He started Desert Veterinary Medical Specialists in the Phoenix Valley and served as adjunct faculty at Midwestern University College of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Church is a founding member of the Cardiac Education Group and is board-certified with the American College of Internal Medicine Subspecialty Cardiology.
This lecture will give instruction on using the signalment, historical description, and physical examination to help us determine if additional diagnostics are needed, or if we can go ahead with appropriate treatment due to a high degree of certainty.
This lecture will give instruction on using the physical examination, radiographic findings, and echocardiographic results to stage and decide on appropriate treatment. Treatment will include heart failure prevention and standard heart failure treatment, as well as what to do when standard treatment fails.
This lecture will give instruction on the special considerations when performing a cardiac physical examination in cats, as well as review the most recent ACVIM Consensus on classifying feline cardiomyopathies. We will discuss the radiographic findings and echocardiographic results to stage and decide on appropriate treatment based on the type of cardiomyopathy.
This lecture will give case-based instruction on using the historical description, physical examination, radiographic findings, and echocardiographic results to decide if the cough seen by the family is cardiac in origin respiratory. A brief description of treatment will also be discussed.
This lecture will give instruction on the specific physical examination findings, radiographic characteristics, and echocardiographic results to determine if the cavitary effusion is cardiogenic. We will also discuss what particular right-sided cardiac disease is present (MMVD, DCM, and pulmonary hypertension, including heartworm disease) and how we treat this special type of congestive heart failure.
This lecture will give instruction on the latest research behind diet-related cardiomyopathy that has been shown to be an important component of modern dilated cardiomyopathy. We will discuss proposed mechanisms and treatment of this condition.
Ann Wortinger is a 1983 graduate of Michigan State University who has received her specialty certification in Emergency/Critical Care, Small Animal Internal Medicine, and Nutrition. In 2020, she attained her Elite Fear Free® certification. Ann has worked in general, emergency, and specialty practice, education, and management and has mentored over 20 fellow Veterinary Technician Specialists. She is currently an instructor and academic advisor for Ashworth College’s Veterinary Technology Program.
As with most things, practice makes perfect with complete blood counts (CBCs). With all the new automated machines, many of us don’t do differentials as often as we should. The bad part is, if you don’t practice CBCs regularly, you forget the small, weird things that can occur with cells. We will go over some common abnormalities seen in RBCs and WBCs, what they look like, and what can cause these changes.
Everyone knows what electrolytes are and maybe even where to find them. But do you really know what they do and how they affect the entire body? They are more than just values found on a blood panel. Look into the secret life of positive and negative charges and the body they dwell within.
Fluid therapy is something we should all be doing on a daily basis, but what exactly are we doing when we administer fluids? Learn about fluid distribution within the body, indications for fluid therapy, how to calculate for hydration deficits, maintenance requirements, and replacement losses. Also addressed will be routes of administrations and types of fluids that can be used.
We often see Addison’s disease on differential lists, but what is this disease and how do we recognize, diagnose, and treat it? In this session, we will go through the electrolyte changes that occur with Addison’s disease, the test procedures used for diagnosis, and treatment options for both acute and chronic presentations.
Our understanding of diabetes in dogs and cats, as well as the best treatment options, continues to grow. Learn what diabetes really is, what some potential causes can be, best treatment options, management techniques, and food and exercise options.
Canine heartworm disease can be found across the United States and Canada. The complex lifecycle of this disease involves the mosquito, with the dog as the definitive host. The life cycle inside the dog is prolonged and complex. Even though we have a number of highly effective preventatives, we continue to see positive cases on a regular basis.
Reports of feline heartworm disease have been published for over 80 years, yet we still do not spend enough time talking to our clients about prevention. For cats, prevention is the key, as there is currently no effective, safe treatment. Learn how cats with heartworm are different than dogs and how heartworm behaves when infecting cats.
As the tick that causes Lyme disease spreads throughout the U.S. and Canada, this disease is increasingly seen in areas not previously affected. We’ll look at the causative organism, transmission, and clinical signs of Lyme disease, as well as diagnostic testing, treatment recommendations, and prognosis.
It’s Not About Politics….It’s About Your Profession. The CVMA PAC is a bipartisan political action committee whose purpose is to educate state legislators and candidates on issues of importance to the veterinary profession.