Proactive solutions for patient wellness

On this week's episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, James Bascharon, DVM, joins our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, to talk about the importance of proactive pet care in veterinary medicine, specifically with anal glands and osteoarthritis. Through the episode, Christman and Bascharon talk about different products, the importance of early intervention and multimodal treatments for osteoarthritis, and the need for innovation within the veterinary medicine industry.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity.

James Bascharon, DVM: I think we've been conditioned a little bit as vets. Sometimes we just go right to the treatment, and particularly in this instance, right, it's easy enough to do an anal gland expression, but overly manipulating the glands just further exacerbates the problem, reduces the tone of the glands itself, and can create some micro trauma to the ducts and further irritation. So I do think it's worthwhile to stop and pause and say, Okay, this pet has recurrent condition, whatever the recurring condition is, in this case, anal gland issues. What do we need to be thinking about? Are there underlying allergic issues here that we're not recognizing? Is there an underlying, you know, digestive health issue, whether imbalance of bacteria, you know, a parasitic issue or something else or a diet change that's needed.

On that note of diet, I mean, it is interesting that, as we've gotten to higher quality, more expensive, fancier dog foods, one trying to outcompete the next, have we done too much and removed a little bit too much of the fillers and the fibers that are necessary to form bulky and firm stool. So there was this whole movement around grain free, as we all know. And there are repercussions to it. You know there, there does require some of those elements in the digestive tract and in the diet to produce formed and healthy and bulky stools that are necessary to empty the glands. And so it's one of the the theories that we have on why anal gland issues are increasing, and just so all the viewers can hear this. It they are technically called anal sacs. So we do know that we go by anal glands, because I think sometimes it's a little bit easier for people to understand what you're talking about, but the correct term is anal sac and anal sacculitis.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Thank you for sharing that is true, because there is a disconnect. Like, pet owners may not seem to recognize like, anal sac versus like, anal gland. It just seems to be more, I don't know, people get to recognize that more and assimilate to that.