Information for my vet

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Jen & Squeak

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Hi everyone

So my vet and I are also casual friends, and last night we were out for coffee. I asked her if she has any cats with acromegaly and she said no. Her method of treating FD is pretty good considering all the other vets we see (she supports canned food, lantus, and tries to get people to home test but isn't great with microdosing, etc).

She really doesn't know much about acromegaly at all so I promised her some info in case she runs across a patient who might have it....so I came here and have copied over your 'stickies' but am wondering if there is more info I should be sending her? I only have time to glance through your HD ISG posts and posts on the Main health board, so I'm pretty certain there is a lot of stuff I"m not aware of.

Thanks in advance

Jen
 
The stickies are a pretty good summary -- there are links though, in case you want to print the info at the links or tell us if they are broken.

We periodically update the sticky "what we know about Acro...."
 
Jen, if you send me your e-mail, I'll send you two files I have. One, was in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery (2010) and the other is the information Dr. Lunn wrote for her most recent study.
 
One thing she may find surprising, is that if the clinic sees 3-4 diabetic cats, statistically 1 of them may have acro. The acro may not look any different from the other 2-3 cats, but they are requiring a lot more insulin to get into good numbers. It is not rare, like was previously thought.

It is worth diagnosing, however, because how they are treated has some significant differences from "normal" FD, besides just high doses.

ie
organ enlargement, heart issues, pain management, home testing for fluctuating BG secondary to tumor output fluctuations, respiratory issues, treatment of hypo numbers or numbers under 100 due to functioning pancreas, target BG is not green, use of levemir (try referencing Dr Alice Wolf on VIN), possibility of joining a clinical trial, or of receiving stereotactic tx, and I'm sure there are others.
 
Hey Jen,
What about looking at some of our ss? It may give an idea into how their resistance shows and how they react to various dosing.

Just looking at my two, they are like nite and day. Shadoe does not look the part at all, and I had alot of resistance from my vet office to have her tested. Oliver, on the other hand, looks so much the part that you would want to test him based just on his appearance.

There's also the acro site which has lots of info -
http://catacromegaly.com/acmb/index.php

I got an u/s done on Shadoe after her positive, but went with Xrays for Oliver. I like the Xrays better and can actually see stuff (and lots of poops according to the vet). The Xrays I have on a disk and also sigma view used to display the images, but not sure how to save the info and be able to share it.
 
Thanks Gayle. For now, neither of us have time to delve into the spreadsheets, and she currently doesn't have any diabetics who qualify (although who knows, after reading what I sent, maybe she'll think of one). that said, if she does get one who seems to need an abnormally high dose, we'll start digging more.

Jen
 
Hey Gayle,
Something to try for sharing the X-ray or Ultrasound images --- when you have them on the computer screen -- hold down the CONTROL key and click the PRINT SCREEN key.

This takes a "snapshot" of your screen and places it in the temporary "Clipboard"

Then open a picture editing program like MS Paint (under "Accessories") or a free program like "Irfanview", and PASTE -- save to your preferred image format.

(Paint only saves .bmp bitmaps, Irfanview is more flexible -- I usually do .jpg files)
 
Awesome! I will try that tip on Oliver's Xrays in the morning to see if I can get copies online.
 
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