Vets may suggest particular examinations when you take your furry companion for a checkup to treat and identify any health conditions and ensure your pet is in its best health. Prevention is important to maintain your pet’s well-being and prolonged life. Furthermore, this helps reduce the overall expense of pet parenting as you’re proactively preventing any onset of potential health conditions.
Routine wellness examinations assist your vet in determining any health issues early and ensure your pet receives the best care possible. So let’s tackle the common diagnostic procedures performed in vet laboratories to help you be knowledgeable about keeping your pet healthy.
Top 5 Vet Diagnostic Services
Diagnostic examinations are performed to help the vet identify any diseases that are brewing or developing inside your pet. Below are five common diagnostic tests usually performed in an advanced in-house veterinary lab to determine and address pet health conditions.
1. Heartworm testing
Heartworm is an internal parasite that can’t be found through fecal examinations. This is because they reside in the blood arteries of the lungs and heart instead of the digestive system. An antigen examination can detect heartworm proteins, called antigens, which are released in the canine’s bloodstream by adult female heartworms. Even if a dog is on heartworm prevention year-round, yearly heartworm testing is still necessary to ensure the prevention program works.
2. Urinalysis
Through a urine analyzer, veterinarians evaluate the chemical and physical composition of the urine. A urinalysis provides necessary diagnostic information regarding conditions affecting the genital and urinary tracts and serious health conditions like Cushing’s disease, liver disease, diabetes, and many more.
The urinalysis is important to diagnostic evaluations of health conditions and essential to thorough preventive medicine programs. When you take your furry companion for a routine vet examination, expect urinalysis, CBC, thyroid hormone testing, and biochemistry profile to be done aside from assessing their general condition. You may browse the web for more information on the importance of routine vet exams.
3. Complete Blood Count (CBC)
Commonly used to perform blood examinations like CBC, a hematology analyzer measures the number of platelets, white blood cells, and red blood cells in a blood sample. The numbers of each cell type provide valuable info to accurately diagnose leukemia, infections, and anemia. If your pet is currently under treatment for a health condition, a CBC helps your veterinarian monitor how well your pet is responding to the treatment.
4. Digital X-Rays
X-rays are important diagnostic tools in the medical diagnosis of pets. With the high-quality radiographs provided by modern digital vet x-ray equipment, attending to diagnosing many pet disorders has now become easier. To achieve the best possible image, many vet labs and centers today have invested in advanced x-ray devices and fully trained technicians that produce the best image possible.
Through the modern digital x-ray systems, your referring vets can access these content or images anytime through the web, which promotes a smooth transition back to the referring vet. X-ray is also crucial in the field of cat surgery. Pets that sprain a leg or crack a bone are evaluated on an x-ray machine before a veterinary surgeon tackles their condition.
5. Fecal examination
The veterinarian examines a pet’s feces under a microscope to look for clues about health conditions that are causing internal bleeding, pancreas disorders, and difficulties with digestion. Most importantly, fecal examinations search for signs of intestinal parasites like giardia, hookworm, roundworm, tapeworm, and whipworm. Tapeworm segments, adult worms, or larvae might also be observed in the procedure.
