Departments

Internal Medicine

Veterinary internal medicine specialists see a variety of patients with conditions affecting multiple parts of the body. We often are sorting out very complicated diseases that affect the gastrointestinal tract, urinary system, hormone systems, blood, lungs, liver, pancreas, and more. We also diagnose many type of infectious diseases and immune system disorders. It's one of the most varied specialties. Sometimes when your family vet knows that your pet is sick, but isn't sure exactly who they should see, they send them to an internist. Even if the internist may not end up being the perfect doctor, they often can start the process of diagnosing the patient, and guide them to the appropriate doctor. However, with the widely ranging diseases treated by an internist, in many cases the internist does end up being the right doctor.

Veterinary internal medicine is not the same as human internal medicine. In the human counterpart, an internist is essentially a primary care physician. In that situation, with illness the patient is sent to a sub-specialist. In veterinary medicine, the internist receives patients on referral and their specialty encompasses most of the human sub-specialties.

Some of the more common tests that an internist performs:

• Ultrasound (sonogram)- allows us to look inside the body to assess the size, shape, and appearance of many of the internal organs- this is helpful for a variety of conditions. If an issue is found, sometimes it can be sampled in a very non-invasive way to allow for a diagnosis
• Endoscopy- this is a “scope”- a long tube with a camera is placed into the stomach/intestines and/or colon to allow us to look for visible problems and to take biopsies to make a diagnosis in a variety of GI disorders
• Bronchosopy- this is using a scope in the respiratory tract
• Rhinoscopy- this is a scope of the nose- we don't often do this directly as the nasal passage is so small- often looking with a CT scan is better. However we still sometimes do this, or a variation of it where we look where “post-nasal drip” occurs
• Cystoscopy- this is a scope of a female dog's lower urogenital system (bladder, urethra, vagina)
• CT scan- this can be done on the nose or the chest to get a very detailed 3 dimensional image of the area- it helps to identify and locate problems in great detail
• Labwork- your family vet likely would perform basic labwork prior to referral but there are hundreds of possible follow up tests that may be performed on blood, urine, or other samples 
• Blood glucose curves- this is an all day test to check how well we are able to control a particular patient's diabetes
• Bone marrow aspiration/biopsy- if the bone marrow is sick this is a test to determine the underlying cause