Insights from a gastroenterology expert

Jörg M. Steiner, Med Vet, Dr Med Vet, PhD, DACVIM-SAIM, DECVIM-CA, AGAF sat down with dvm360 in a video interview and shared his start in veterinary medicine, and specifically, how he pursued gastroenterology within small animal internal medicine. He also discussed how pancreatitis can differ in dogs and cats, and how they can appear the same.

The following is a partial transcript of the video.

Jörg M. Steiner, Med Vet, Dr Med Vet, PhD, DACVIM-SAIM, DECVIM-CA, AGAF: I'm Jörg Steiner from Texas A&M University and I mainly act as the director of the gastrointestinal ward here at Texas A&M. I'm a Regents Professor, University Distinguished Professor, Small Animal Internal Medicine.

I really didn't want to become a veterinarian in the first place. I wanted to be a farmer, and my dad did not want me to become a farmer. And so we compromised them becoming a veterinarian. So my idea, of course with that in mind, was that I would treat mostly cows. And then I realized that you couldn't do that much with cows, so I went small animals.

I always would say that there's more commonalities than differences between dogs and cats. I think the big difference—or the perceived difference—comes in because cats present with more vague clinical signs than dogs. And so certainly in dogs we have a much better understanding of acute disease versus chronic disease, versus in cats we don't really expect a lot of acute disease even though they have it sometimes.