Diagnosing chronic kidney disease in feline patients

In a preview of her upcoming lecture at Fetch Nashville, Natalie L. Marks, DVM, CVJ, Elite FFCP-V, shares how veterinary teams can diagnose chronic kidney disease (CKD) in cats, what diagnostic tests you can utilize along the way, and the importance of everyone, including specialists, being on the same page when it comes to the language surrounding CKD.

The following is a partial transcript of the video:

Natalie L. Marks, DVM, CVJ, Elite FFCP-V: Some of our [cats with] chronic kidney disease will have acute on chronic [condition] so they're sort of coasting along at their baseline and all of a sudden something spikes and we need to know if there's been an acute kidney injury on top of their underlying chronic disease. The other 2 pieces I want to point out there would be, if you can, we want to do a low colony urine culture, because that really does look for any low grade infection that might be a source like pyelonephritis. Every ill cat should [also] have a feline leukemia and FIP current test for status so we know their viral status. It's really nice if you can have a FT4 by Equilibrium Dialysis to really make sure we don't have some brewing hyperthyroidism because we know kidneys and thyroid hate each other and that can be a delicate balance. And then finally, blood pressure. You definitely want to have a current blood pressure, ideally the average of 3 so that we can really see if hype if hypertension is part of this too.