Considerations for allergic dermatitis treatments

During this interview with dvm360 at the 2025 WVC conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Brittany Lancellotti, DVM, DACVO, a practicing veterinarian at Skin and Ear in west Los Angeles, California, provided listeners things that they should consider when deciding a treatment plan for their canine patients suffering from allergic dermatitis.

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Lancellotti explains that in order to provide the best treatment for the patient, presentation, age, primary triggers, and other schools of thought are some of the multiple things that are important factors to be reviewed with the client and team to decide what is the best option for each itchy canine.

Below is a full transcript of the interview:

Brittany Lancellotti, DVM, DACVO: My name is Dr Brittany Lancellotti, I am a veterinary dermatologist at Veterinary Skin and Ear in west Los Angeles.

So when figuring out a treatment for canine allergic dermatitis, there are a lot of factors that veterinarians need to take into consideration, including the patients age, comorbidities, how that disease presents on the animal, are they more itchy, are they more inflamed, are there secondary infections going on whether or not this is seasonal or nonseasonal, is this something that has flared up acutely, or is this a chronic disease for that animal. So, determining the primary triggers is very helpful in addressing the disease, and those include food allergies, flea allergies, and environmental allergies but then taking into consideration how the animal disease is presenting and what other comorbidities they have can help you determine which anti-itch or anti-flamatory medication will give them the safest and most effective relief.