Top 5 dvm360 videos of 2024: #1

As 2024 draws to a close, dvm360 is counting down our Top 5 videos of 2024. The ranking is based on measurable interest and engagement from our digital viewers. These 5 videos feature thought leaders from throughout the veterinary care industry, who discuss a variety of topics.

The #1 video on the Top 5 list features Julia Miller, DVM, DACVD. an assistant clinical professor at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, New York. In this interview—sponsored by Blue Buffalo and recorded at the Fetch dvm360 Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina—Miller discusses diagnosing and managing environmental allergies in pets, emphasizing the importance of allergy testing not just for identification but also for creating customized immunotherapy to enhance the pets’ quality of life.

The following is a partial transcript:

Allergy testing is something I love to do for my environmentally allergic pets. So I go through the whole process of ruling out flea allergy, making sure it's not a food allergy. And then when we get into environmental allergies being the cause for the patient's itch, that's what I'll often recommend allergy testing. But I don't do allergy testing just to know what they're allergic to because you can't avoid. I always tell people, if you figure out how to avoid ragweed, you tell no one else, you tell me, and then we'll be rich together. So, we don't do it for avoidance purposes or just no. knowledge. What we do allergy testing for is for to create immunotherapy so that we can then create the own specific allergy vaccine or injection for that particular patient to try to desensitize them. It can be really hard to tell the difference so the only way to truly know if you've got a pet that is not nonseasonally itchy, so how they present the same, food allergies and environmental allergies can both be nonseasonally itchy, that's the big thing that we see. They can have recurrent ear infections for both of them, recurrent anal saculitis, things like that. So if you have that nonseasonally itchy kiddo that gets recurrent ear infections, then you're kind of in the well is it food or is it environment, and what you have to do, fortunately, unfortunately, what you have to do first is rule out food. That's the critical thing.

So a strict prescription diet trial is the way to rule out a food allergy. And then once you rule out that food allergy, then you proceed with environmental stuff. So there's a lot of tools in our toolbox. And I think it is really important that we utilize them. So you know, Apoquel is great, Cytopoint is great, but we need some epidermal barrier support in these dogs. We need to reduce surface microbes. Some patients actually really benefit from routine bathing, things like that. So the more you utilize the different tools in your toolbox and approach from an inside out and outside in kind of a way, you can actually create a much happier, healthier patient that may be less reliant on drugs, and you tend to see your itch control be better.

So for topicals, I think there are so many out there that are fantastic. The number one rule I go by is what will the client do? So I'm always looking for a topical that smells nice, goes on nice, and is easy for the client to use because if they can't do it, they're not going to do it and then it doesn't help us out at all. So I always have a conversation with the client and try to see what will be the easiest for them to use.

View the full transcript and video here.