How to Approach Emergency Cases in the Veterinary Setting

Elke Rudloff, DVM, DACVECC, clinical specialist and residency trauma supervisor at Lakeshore Veterinary Specialists, outlines the initial approach to dealing with an emergency case in the veterinary setting.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“When you’re doing emergency medicine, whether it’s trauma or [it’s] a patient that’s in congestive heart failure or [one] that maybe had ingested a toxin, the basic initial approach is always the same. [First do] a primary survey, triaging the patient, primary survey of the systems that we talked about before (the respiratory system, cardiovascular, neurological system), [then] identify problems with those systems regardless of why they come into your clinic first, because if there are abnormalities, those are what you address first to stabilize the patient and then determine if you can help that patient at your hospital or [if] it needs to go to another facility for more definitive care.”