Dr. Lera Clone walks through Charlie, a 9-month-old Saint Bernard with Addison's disease, diagnosed after bloodwork showed a low sodium-to-potassium ratio. The condition requires two types of steroid replacement and frequent monitoring: bloodwork every 25 to 30 days at first, then every six months once stable.
Questions this video answers
9–10 month-old male Saint Bernard.
A low sodium:potassium ratio on blood work (electrolytes 'out of whack').
Two kinds of steroid replacement (both types required).
Every 25–30 days until dosage is achieved and electrolytes normalize.
About once every six months.
Chapters
Hey, guys. My name is Dr. Lara here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. Today I'm here with Charlie. Charlie is a 9 to 10 month old male Saint Bernard. And Charlie was having a history as a puppy of having a lot of diarrhea, not really gaining weight, being kind of skinny. And so when Charlie came to me for the first time, he was coming in because he was having another episode of diarrhea, not feeling well. And so we went ahead and we did some blood work on Charlie. And when we did the blood work, we noticed that not only did he have elevated kidney values, but his electrolytes were really out of whack in a certain way to where what we call his sodium potassium ratio was a lot lower than it should be. And that's typically an indication of a disease called Addison's. That's where the body doesn't produce enough steroids. And so what can happen is that the potassium will start to become very, very high to the point where it's possible that they can have a heart attack. And so a lot of the times what will happen is they will need to be put on steroids. Sometimes it's one kind of steroid or sometimes it's two kinds of steroids. Charlie has the condition now at the point where he needs both kinds of steroids. And so it's something that's really critical for Charlie. He's going to be having his blood work checked on a regular basis and once every 25 to 30 days. And it's something where normally you want to make sure that his electrolytes and everything is where it should be once the dosage is achieved, that works for him, and we notice that everything is where it should be, then typically you'll be checking the blood work once every six months in an ideal situation to make sure that everything is okay. Otherwise. In this particular case, we also would want to check Charlie's kidney values because he did have some elevated kidney values when he first presented to me about a month ago. Okay. The other thing is that there is an ultra low dose of this particular drug, which we'll talk about on the next video following this one, and some of the recommendations as to whether to do it or not to do it. And if you decide to go down that path, how to go about doing it safely. If you guys have any questions about this video or found it helpful, put the comments in the comment box. If you found it helpful, like I said, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and share. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
