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Professor Adrian Boswood Joins An Impressive Roll-call On The BSAVA Science Stream At BVA Congress

Author: BVA
Posted: Tuesday 31st May, 2011. 17:02:15

Technology can sometimes seem to be a barrier instead of a gateway to providing better clinical services for clients of veterinary practices.

In disciplines like cardiology, there is a wide range of high-tech kit to aid diagnosis and monitoring of treatment. But many vets in first opinion practice find it an extremely daunting challenge to interpret, say, an ultrasound image of the beating heart. They don’t see enough cases to build up confidence and competence in handling the equipment and so even when the technology is available for use, those cases are best referred on to a colleague inside or outside the practice.

As part of the BSAVA supported science at BVA Congress, Professor Adrian Boswood, an RCVS accredited specialist in veterinary cardiology at the Royal Veterinary College aims to prove that using advanced diagnostic technologies in small animal patients is an achievable goal for any practitioner willing to try.

Professor Boswood believes that there are two types of lectures at veterinary meetings – one is intended to demonstrate cutting edge science while the other hopes to show how already established methods can be used more widely by general practitioners. “I will be giving three lectures at BVA Congress –on ultrasound, electrocardiograms and on cardiac disease biomarkers. They each very much fall in the second category – I am not showing colleagues what I can do, I am demonstrating what they can do,” he says.

He will be demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of ultrasound and ECGs in assessing patients with those sort of conditions, like canine mitral valve disease, that are likely to show up regularly at a first opinion clinic. He will then show which of the many different settings and techniques described in the veterinary literature will be of most value for a practitioner who is a relative newcomer to the discipline. “In acquiring any new skill, it is vital to be able to repeat the process to develop competence. So if a practitioner is only seeing a few cases it is important to learn to acquire simple images well rather than multiple images badly. There is so much information that can be gained from a small number of ultrasound measurements – for example, left ventricular diameter, left wall thickness and left atrial size measurements are absolutely key to making the diagnosis.”

Adrian’s presentation on cardiac biomarkers will be slightly different, in as much that these offer a potentially very simple method for clinicians to use in their diagnostic work up of a patient with heart disease. But he says it has attracted controversy because some biochemical tests have been introduced before their clinical value has been properly assessed, and so the results have sometimes proved disappointing.

However, it is an area of active research and he is optimistic that improved tests will be developed and that these will help veterinary practices provide a better service for the owners of cardiac patients. “I do think this is a very exciting area as it will potentially provide us with a test that anybody can do because it is a simple matter of taking a blood sample. If we can develop better diagnostic criteria then I think biomarkers are something that can improve the general standard of management of cardiac disease in small animal practice.”

The cardiology talks are just one part of an excellent programme, supported and designed by BSAVA to extend the programme available at BVA Congress. This will help to make BVA Congress even more attractive to vets in the South East – and indeed, make it worth a journey into the city – September 22-24. For more information visit www.bva.co.uk.

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