Clinical Challenges Made Easy At BVA Congress In London

No matter how frequently some conditions are seen, there is nearly always scope for carrying out a faster, smarter and more cost-effective clinical work-up, BVA Congress delegates will be told in a series of BSAVA sponsored talks at the annual BVA Congress in London, September 22-24 The BSAVA has drawn up a high quality CPD programme to complement the political debates at BVA’s annual meeting, with lectures from leading specialists from university and private referral centres. They will be focussing on feline medicine, on gastrointestinal medicine/surgery, and on cardiorespiratory medicine, explains Professor Ian Ramsey, of the University of Glasgow veterinary school, who drafted the menu. The one thing that these three disparate areas of practice have in common is that they provide a constant challenge to the clinical skills of general practitioners in small animal and mixed practices. So his idea in choosing the speakers was to look at disciplines in which efforts to improve and refresh clinical knowledge will have immediate applications in providing a better service to clients, Prof. Ramsey explains. Now that cats are overtaking dogs as the most commonly kept domestic animal is there any need for a particular focus at the meeting on routine feline conditions? Prof. Ramsey points out that feline medicine is still a relatively new discipline and cats are not the most cooperative of patients. They hide their symptoms so well that they are usually at a much more advanced stage of the disease process by the time that they are brought in for treatment than an equivalent case in a dog, he says. Moreover, the rise in numbers of cats covered by pet insurance and the growing expectations of cat owners mean that first opinion clinicians cannot afford to rest on their laurels. Meanwhile, the two other streams share a common feature, focussing on deep body tissues. “It is very much harder to work out what is going on in the gut or in the heart compared with, say, dermatology cases. True there is now a wide range of advanced imaging techniques available at referral centres. But if a general practitioner has only limited experience of these technologies they may not be able to properly interpret the report when it comes back to them,” he says. One of the problems facing busy practitioners is time pressure which will often encourage them to have one eye on the treatment options when they should be concentrating on the diagnostic work-up. So the speakers will be reminding their audience of the necessity for taking logical and orderly steps towards reaching a diagnosis. As well as drafting the programme, Prof. Ramsey will also be delivering three presentations in the feline medicine stream on polyuria, hyperthyroidism and diabetes mellitus. He says the first paper sets out a useful model for carrying an effective diagnostic work up in a wide range of clinical situations. “There are only six common causes of polyuria and a few more which are only seen very rarely. I will try to show the best approach for identifying which particular one is involved, it is just like following a recipe. If you carry out this test and then take that step you will arrive at the right answer. It is when you try to jump a step or take them in the wrong order that you will have problems because the results of one test will help you interpret the results of the next one in the sequence.” An unusual feature of this CPD event is that participants will be taking part in a quiz session at the end, based on what they have seen and heard during the day. The idea of the quiz is that it should provide a little bit of fun at the end of a tough day but it also has a serious purpose. Attendees at any CPD event will only take in a percentage of the information given in the presentations and even then they may not have the confidence to apply that new knowledge in the routine work. “What we are hoping to do is to set the information in the context of a clinical case so that people will be ready to use what they have learned as soon as they go back to their practice,” he says. For more information on all aspects of the BVA Congress programme visit www.bva.co.uk/congress

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