What Role Does a Patient's History Play in Dermatology Cases?

Jennie Tait, AHT, RVT, VTS, from Yu of Guelph Veterinary Dermatology in Ontario, Canada, discusses how a patient's health history offers clues in determining dermatology.

Jennie Tait, AHT, RVT, VTS: History in our derm patients is huge. It totally goes back to that detective work thing. Age of onset: that tells us a whole lot, what we’re dealing with. Whether the onset is acute or gradual also helps us out a lot. So, in our patients, seasonality is really an important part of their history.

With an environmental allergy—animals grow into their allergies, people grow out of them. With an environmental allergy, they usually start out seasonal, for a couple of years, and they just shift to going all year-round with their issues.

There’s up to 30% of our derm patients that have a combination of a food allergy and an environmental allergy. With a food allergy, you’re eating every day, hopefully, so you’re going to have symptoms all throughout the year.

With our combo animals—combination food allergy and environmental allergy—we can see them having trouble all year long, but there might be times of year that things are a little bit easier for them or things are a little bit harder for them. So, that can clue you in that they’re a combo patient. So, lots and lots of stuff in history that we pick up.