Compendium
September 2000Small Animal/Exotics
ogy. Each parameter is expertly sum-marized, and the indications and in-terpretations for each test are thor-oughly discussed.
Part 4—Treatment:
This sectiondiscusses how the treatment of catsinfected with
D. immitis
can be alose–lose proposition and reviews inconsiderable detail the pros and consof adulticidal therapy, postadulticidalconsequences, efficacy of treatment,and conservative therapy using glu-cocorticoids. The author offers com-pelling reasons to prevent rather thantreat this infection in cats and dis-cusses the role of both ivermectinand selamectin.
CRITIQUE.
The educational strengthof this web site clearly outweighs any negative aspects. Although most of the illustrations and maps are of good quality, the quality of somecharts, including the
D. immitis
lifecycle, is disappointing. In addition, when printing an image from thescreen, all of the artifacts viewed inthe on-screen image become en-larged and enhanced. Some of the ra-diographic and photomicroscopicimages are particularly small. Theoccasional use of video in Part 3 toillustrate echocardiograms is, howev-er, especially well done and signifi-cantly enhances the educational val-ue of the site. Although the definitions of pertinentterms are generally of value to mostpractitioners, several of the defini-tions given are superficial. For exam-ple, type II alveolar cell hypertrophy is defined as “a large cell in theairspace that makes surfactant” with-out stipulation as to whether hyper-page for feline heartworm disease(the URL provided is a link directly to the feline heartworm page). Thispage allows the user to access severalareas, including an introduction andtable of contents for each of fourparts, or sections; any one of the fourparts (biology, pathology and clinicalpresentation, diagnosis, or clinicalmanagement); terminology; abstractson feline heartworm disease; a bio-graphic sketch of Dr. Dillon; or theentire document.
HIGHLIGHTS.
Overall, this site is well written and applicable to themanagement of feline heartwormdisease in clinical practice. Severalphotographs, graphs, and incidencecharts are easy to access with a singleclick of the mouse. A built-in glos-sary of medical terms is available andis a useful device. A strong feature of this web site is its abundant use of links to published abstracts that aredirectly pertinent to the topic beingdiscussed. The following site review briefly summarizes the major menuselections.
Part 1—Biology:
The biology of
Dirofilaria immitis
infection in cats is well worth the few minutes it takesto read. Clearly, feline heartwormdisease is not the same as canineheartworm disease, and a basic re-view of the differences adds consider-ably to the understanding of theclinical events related to this infec-tion in cats. The life cycle of
D. im- mitis
, which is included in the pre-sentation, reinforces the biologicexplanation of the different clinicalpresentations of feline and canineheartworm disease.
Part 2—Pathology and ClinicalDisease:
This section examines thegeneral pulmonary pathology of heartworm disease in cats and its sim-ilarity to that in dogs and providespertinent information on clinical pre-sentation of the disease, includingclinical signs, history, physical exami-nation, clinical pathology, and bloodchemistries and urinalysis.
Part 3—Diagnosis:
This section isparticularly important for practicingveterinarians and reviews thethree serologic methods of di-agnosing feline heartworm dis-ease and seven diagnostic pa-rameters, ranging from antigenand antibody testing to echo-cardiography to tracheal cytol-
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