Navigating zoological veterinary medicine

On this week's episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, welcomes Christian Capobianco, DVM, CertAqV, CVA, to discuss what his journey was like pursuing a career in zoo medicine. Throughout the episode, the 2 doctors review the process for certification, unique and interesting cases Capobianco has worked on, and even myth busting some common misconceptions surrounding zoo medicine.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: You know how there's such technology has really rapidly evolved in companion animal medicine in general, with dogs and cats, it's been incredible, and especially with [artificial intelligence], is that, is it growing in the terms of the zoo med sector? Do you think there's a lot of great technology that's out there?...

Christian Capobianco, DVM, CertAqV, CVA: ...The rapid evolution of technology is going to always...be super helpful for veterinary medicine. It's just a little bit challenging, because I feel like zoo medicine tends to lag a little bit behind some of the other specialties, just because we're dealing with so many species and trying to figure out what's going to work in each species. But absolutely...Nowadays we're utilizing implantable loop recorders, if you've ever heard of them for humans, to do continuous ECG tracings. We utilize them in our Grade 8 patients a ton nowadays. There are a number of publications out there for that. Since it's really hard for us to get voluntary awake ECGs on these animals, and they have a very high incidence of heart disease, we have been utilizing that technology extensively.

We can also get awake EKGs on them by using the little cardio mobile thing, where you put...your 2 fingers on...so some of those animals are trained to...place their fingers on little portable ECG and get some tracings as well. They're trained for voluntary blood pressures. So when I think of technology helping zoo med, that's one of the first things that comes to mind.