Assessing respiratory emergency patients

In this dvm360® interview, Kenichiro Yagi, RVT, VTS (ECC), VTS (SAIM), MS, emphasized the importance of noting both visual and auditory cues to draw conclusions when assessing dogs or cats experiencing severe respiratory symptoms.

View the video below for the entire discussion. The following is a partial transcript.

Kenichiro Yagi, RVT, VTS (ECC), VTS (SAIM), MS: Assessing these patients, there's a lot of things that we can do, right? There's our visual look at the animal to begin with, what do they look like? What does their breathing pattern look like? What color are their gums? [There are] different kinds of things that we can tell just by visibly looking at [the pet]. I think we tend to intuitively understand when an animal looks like [it's] having trouble breathing, but when we start to break it down into the different ways . . . we get to draw out a lot more information than we really tend to think.