Jennifer E. Stokes, DVM, DACVIM

There is little evidence based medicine concerning the best dietary or nutritional management of alimentary disease in dogs and cats.

Functions of the liver include carbohydrate, lipid and fat metabolism, detoxification of metabolites, storage of vitamins, trace metals, fat and glycogen, fat digestion and immunoregulation.

By providing a standardized scheme for terminology, diagnosis, and staging of canine and feline liver disorders, WSAVA is contributing to the improvement in the quality of care provided by veterinarians for dogs and cats with hepatobiliary disease.

There is little evidence based medicine concerning the best dietary or nutritional management of alimentary disease in dogs and cats.

In ideal cases, treatment of hepatobiliary cases is based on biopsy, when indicated. Although not all clients will be willing to follow this diagnostic test, I think it is important to make this recommendation.

The vomiting patient is a diagnostic challenge because of the wide variety of gastric, intestinal, and non-GI disorders (metabolic, neurologic, paraneoplastic) that cause this clinical sign.

Physalloptera nematodes are an uncommon cause of chronic vomiting in dogs and uncommon to rare cause in cats. Since the ova are difficult to consistently find using fecal flotation the true importance is likely underestimated.