Should You Get a Second Opinion from a Veterinarian?

Hey, guys. My name is Dr. Lehrer here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. Today, I'm talking about the importance of having a second opinion for major decisions. So we here. Whenever I have any sort of patient that's going to need any sort of major or invasive procedure, I really like to incorporate the opinion of other experts in the veterinary field. And so one of the things that I. One of the areas would be orthopedics. If I have a patient who has a 20 ACL, typically my clients will get three opinions. And the reason that they get three opinions is so that we can have some checks and balances in regards to making sure that everyone is in agreement. If I have a dog that's coming in with lameness or limping on a back leg and I'm able to isolate that pain to the knee, a lot of times, then what I want to do is I want to go ahead and do X rays. I think it's really important to have somebody who looks at X rays all day long and had years of additional training to go ahead and be able to identify more subtle changes and X rays than somebody like me who's a general practitioner. And I'm good here. And it's my job and our jobs as general practitioners to go ahead and screen and pick up the major issues and then use our team of resources to go ahead and help us get the most precise and accurate diagnosis possible so that we can get the best and fastest recovery treatment for. For your pet that is out there. Okay, so when we do the X rays, we then incorporate the radiologist to come in and take a look at the X rays. They give us a second opinion. And then normally what we'll do is the surgeon will come in for a consultation. They'll go ahead and check for what's called a drawer. A drawer is a very subtle movement, which we've talked about in our other videos. If not, you guys can go ahead and look at our cranial cruciate ligament or ACL tear video. That'll go ahead and talk to you about what that is. And he or she will go ahead and give the third opinion on whether or not they agree that it is an ACL tear or not. The other thing that we'll go ahead and use second opinions for is dental disease. Now, dental disease is something where you can't see what's really going on in the mouth unless you do dental X rays. 70% of the disease that goes on in the mouth goes on underneath the gum line. And the only way that you can see there accurately is with dental X rays now incorporating. We work with two dental or oral surgeons here and they are able to identify things that I'm not able to identify just because, again, they see so many cases every single day, multiple days a week, and that's their area of expertise. The other area is ultrasounds or endoscopies. And so we work with a handful of different areas. Internal medicine specialists who will come in and give us consultations regarding patients who have been sick and they have really complicated diseases, or if they need some sort of abdominal ultrasound, even if the patients are having some sort of GI disease. So if they're vomiting, if they're losing weight, if they're having diarrhea and we need to do some sort of scoping, so that's putting the camera either through the front end or, or going up the back end. And so it's really important to incorporate these people so that you can get a second set of eyes on the patient because that's really what a lot of times will make sure that nothing is being missed. If you guys have any questions about why it is you think that a second opinion is necessary or isn't necessary, please leave it in the comment box. I'm more than happy to go ahead and discuss it and respond. If you found this video, please give us a thumbs up, share it and go ahead and subscribe. Thanks for watching and have a great day.