The concept of the pruritic threshold in veterinary dermatology

Another article from The Webinar Vet- leaders in online vet cpd

What exactly is the pruritic threshold? In the pruritic threshold a dog is presented that is food-allergic, has fleas, and is atopic. It can happen! Suddenly you give it flea control and put it on a hypoallergenic diet and you take it below its pruritic threshold. Add those elements in again, and the dog begins to itch again. So we’ve been able to, just by adding flea treatment and a food trial, take it below its pruritic threshold. If you performed an allergy test, it would show that it had an allergy to dust mites. However, it’s subclinical, and you don’t need to treat it. And because you’ve gone through things logically and done the cheaper things first, you’ve not ended up spending two or three hundred pounds on a vaccine, which never worked and left the client disgruntled. The client is happy and stays with the practice.

So it’s worth looking at. Go to the common things first, the easy tests first, and rule all of those things out. Veterinary dermatology is simple! Often you’ll find that the dog has improved anyway. It may have had an infection. If you get rid of the infection that will help to control the pruritus.

Common pitfalls in treatment that would commonly see include when clients have not done enough flea treatments. What happens is, people look at the box of Frontline, and it says on the box, “This box will last up to 15 weeks.” They think that they only have to apply it to the pet every 15 weeks, rather than they have to apply it to the pet every 5 weeks, and therefore the box will last for 15 weeks. It’s quite common when I take a history that I will say, How often are you using Frontline? And then they’ll say, Oh, whatever the vet told us. And I’ll say, Well, how often is that? And they’ll say, every two to three months, or six months. And they think that this is appropriate. So a little tip to take home, do just make sure you’re communicating that correctly to your clients. I think if you’ve got a dog that isn’t flea-allergic, if you apply it to the pet every other month, certainly in the winter months that’s probably fine. If it has a pruritic problem, I think you should be really recommending weekly treatment with Frontline, Stronghold, or whichever product you want to use.

This article was taken from a veterinary webinar from The Webinar Vet, a provider of quality veterinary CPD.