Tag Archives: diabetes

I hear a great deal of confusion from pet families about the role of veterinary internal medicine specialists. Much of this confusion seems to come from trying to map human medicine definitions onto veterinary specialists. For example, my personal physician—the doctor I see for routine care such as flu vaccines, cholesterol monitoring and the occasional minor illness—is a board-certified internal medicine specialist with expertise in primary care. In veterinary medicine, however, board-certified internal medicine specialists (like those at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center) do not typically provide routine care. Instead, they have additional training and skills to diagnose and manage complex medical conditions. In today’s blogpost, I will use the examples of pancreatic diseases to illustrate what a veterinary internal medicine specialist does and why their expertise matters.

About ten years ago, I developed an educational presentation for veterinarians titled “A Cat Is Not a Little Dog.” This presentation highlighted diseases that affect these two species very differently. For example: Diabetes: Dogs can develop Type I diabetes, while cats develop Type II diabetes Thyroid Disorders: The most common endocrine disorder in dogs is hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid gland), while cats more often have the opposite condition, hyperthyroidism (an overactive thyroid gland) Mast Cell Tumors: These skin tumors are most common in dogs, while in cats they often occur in the spleen. However, there are a few medical similarities between dogs and cats that might surprise you. Today’s blogpost highlights three key areas where our feline and canine companions face similar health challenges.

November is American Diabetes Month. While exact data is not available, diabetes is probably the second most common hormone disorder in cats, after hyperthyroidism. Approximately 0.08–1.24% of cats develop diabetes. Today’s blog focuses on prevention, remission and new treatments for feline diabetes.

November is American Diabetes Month. To highlight how veterinarians care for pets with diabetes, I thought I would tell the story of one of my patients, a fluffy, grey and white

Everyday Medicine is an intermittent series of blog posts highlighting tests, treatments and procedures commonly used at AMC. Some past examples of this type of blog post include “Vital Signs” or