Departments

Internal Medicine

Veterinary Internal Medicine specialists, like a human medicine Internist that you have likely seen, specialize in medical disorders. These range from the very obscure diseases that most clinicians see only a few times in their lives, to common but hard-to-control diseases like diabetes or epilepsy that resist standard treatment. In many cases they are seeing the sickest patients that we treat. Our Board Certified Internists work like detectives to rule out preliminary diagnoses and find the proper course of treatment. Sometimes this involves simple bloodtests, sometimes more involved labwork; sometimes standard xrays are sufficient, other times ultrasound (sonagrams), fluoroscopy or CT scanning is necessary to diagnose. The Internist must take a systematic approach to diagnosis and treatment.

Communication with pet owners throughout this process is key, since some Internal Medicine cases are quickly diagnosed, while others require more exhaustive diagnostics. The Internist is dedicated not only to finding out what is wrong with his or her patients, but in making sure that the pet’s family is on board with the diagnostic and treatment approach.

Some of the more common diagnostic tests performed by our internal medicine team:

• Ultrasound
• Endoscopy
• Rhinoscopy
• Bronchoscopy
• Colonoscopy
• CSF tap (spinal tap)
• Bone Marrow biopsy
• Ultrasound guided fine needle aspiration