Examining exotic pets

How can emergencies with exotic species be handled by general practice veterinarians? S. Emi Knafo, DVM, DACZM, zoological medicine specialist and assistant clinical professor of zoological medicine at the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville, discussed emergency conditions and injuries in pets like rabbits, reptiles and birds, in a dvm360 interview. In this video, Knafo focuses on triage for these exotic pet patients in a general practice setting.

The following is a transcript of the video:

dvm360: What first steps for a general practitioner in treating an exotic pet?

S. Emi Knafo, DVM, DACZM: Being able to do at least an initial exam with full physical and vitals, temperature, respiration and heart rate, is the first critical step, because you actually get a lot of information from that. You can assess their pain.

Pain is in most of these species is pretty well hidden. So when you are getting into your exam and you're seeing that animal bracing, when you do the abdominal palpation or other signs that they're uncomfortable, you know that even though they're not showing you a lot, they're telling you very subtly that they're quite ill or that they need your attention.

We know that if the temperature in rabbit is low, that is a significant prognostic indicator. So all those things can inform how serious you kind of assess this animal's condition. And then you can explain to the owner, given the degree of pain that this animal is in, given the low temperature, this is an animal that probably needs to go into an ICU with some fluids with much more intensive care, and maybe you should go to a specialty hospital. Or normal temperature, soft abdomen, hasn't been eating that well, but because we have all these other normal vitals, let's do outpatient treatment, and we can handle that here.

So, just getting that initial exam and those vitals really helps you know which kind of way you need to go with a case. So I would say, a lot of times we get calls before the veterinarian has actually looked [at] or touched the animal. They have the case history, but they are maybe a little hesitant to get their hands on [the patient]. I would say, just jump in there, do the exam. Realize you know a lot more than you think, and have that information, because that is really going to tell you which way in that fork in the road you're going. Are we stable enough for outpatient, or do we need to refer to specialty? Or maybe they're a general practitioner who's very happy to do blood work, X rays, put an IV catheter in and deal with something a little bit more critical in that case, [and] that's awesome.