A veterinary YouTube video transcript (Dr. Lara/Dr. Lera Clone, Heron Lakes Animal Hospital) describing the case of Obi, a 13-year-old neutered domestic shorthair cat presenting with excessive flatulence. The clinician reviews prior kidney-value concerns, diagnostic steps (X-rays, ultrasound), a suspicious intestinal/colon mass, cytology sampling sent to a lab, and next-step options (colonoscopy with biopsy or exploratory surgery).
Questions this video answers
13-year-old male neutered domestic shorthair.
Heron Lakes Animal Hospital; Dr. Lara (Dr. Lera Clone).
A preliminary cytology sample (not a core or incisional biopsy).
About four to five days.
Chapters
Hey guys, My name is Dr. Lara here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. Today I'm here with Obi. Obi is a 13 year old male neutered domestic shorthair. And so Obi was coming in because he had some elevation in some different kidney values. And when we did, when we saw that, we went ahead and we did some X rays on his belly to see, you know, if there was any misshapen kidneys or anything like that. Don't think about it. You're getting crazy now. So what we ended up doing was we wanted to do an ultrasound. In the meanwhile, things got caught up at home with mom. And so, you know, what ended up happening was OBI was acting fine at the time. And that's actually the best time that you go ahead and you start doing diagnostics. You want to do the diagnostics for the testing when they're acting normal. By the time they're acting sick, the disease has progressed significantly. And at that point it's a much bigger hill decline to potentially get them to recover. Now, in the meanwhile, one of the things that happened with Obi is some of his kidney values did kind of normalize a little bit. But he started farting a lot and he started farting, as mom said, ferociously. And so what ended up happening was that's not normal for cats. If you know, anyone who has cats or you've had a lot of cats, you know, that's not normal. So I told mom, I said, we did some blood work or we checked his blood work to make sure everything was okay. That came back fine. And we did some X rays. The X rays didn't really show a whole lot. And I said, well, you know what, we need to take a look at his kidneys anyways. So let's go ahead and do the ultrasound. Then we'll take a look at the intestines just to make sure. Well, we ended up finding that OB does have some suspicion of some sort of intestinal cancer or colon cancer. And so today we went ahead, we collected a sample and we're sending it out to the lab. It's a preliminary sample. It's a cytology. It is not a core biopsy or an incisional biopsy. And the reason I say that is because only certain diseases can be diagnosed from cytology. Most other diseases can be diagnosed from a excisional or incisional biopsy. And so we're sending that out. We should get the results back within about four or five days. And that's going to help guide us where we're going to go in regards future testing. Most likely what we will end up doing is we will end up doing a colonoscopy where we take a camera and we go in through his anus and we collect biopsies. That way, depending on who's collecting the biopsies, they will be able to collect a lot of quality samples. Otherwise, you may have to do what's called an exploratory surgery where they go in and they collect samples from his intestine, from making an abdominal incision and then going ahead and cutting pieces of the intestine. So we like doing less invasive stuff if at all possible if we can get the information that we need. I have a boarded veterinary internal medicine specialist who's excellent and she's going to be able to go ahead and get us those samples. So we'll keep you up to date with OB and let you know how he's doing. Hopefully we'll be able to get the answers that we need and we'll be able to provide for the best treatment possible. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
