Preventative medicine is recognized as being very important by everyone. Ask anyone and they will tell you that they recognize how important preventative medicine is. Yet, while we speak the words without hesitation, we seldom demonstrate a belief in preventative medicine by our actions.There is always a tommorrow. That is, until there is no tommorrow and we must deal with diseases that are no longer preventable or easily managed.
What Preventative Care Has Been In Veterinarian Medicine
In veterinary medicine, traditionally if you vaccinated your dog or cat, you felt like you were doing a great job of preventative care. And yes, you are providing preventative care against major infectious diseases that are responsible for illness and death of many animals each year. But generally, that is where preventative care stops with most pets. The question is what are you doing to prevent and manage the major noninfectious diseases and illnesses your dog or cat will face as they age? The truth is overall we, as veterinarians, are failing to identify disease early and we, as caretakers, are failing to demand preventative care.
What I Have Seen from this Traditonal Method of Care
After years in veterinarian medicine, I have been faced with the following scene and question too many times to count. I explain to a caretaker that their 12 year old dog is in the advanced stages of kidney failure and there are limited treatment options at this stage of disease. Often we are faced with very aggressive therapy or euthansia of the pet. The question I dread is then asked "If we caught this sooner, would we have been able to treat the problem?" The truth is nearly always yes. If we had identified the disease process earlier, we would have been able to offer a more effective treatment plan.
What We Need to do to Bring About Change
So how do we change this situation? The change will come about when we use a two step approach.
Why Disease is Difficult to Detect in the Early Stages?
