We have written about percutaneous coil embolization before; here is a first-hand report from the owner of a Deerhound who has undergone this procedure.
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liver shunt
by Miranda Levin, Betty Stephenson, DVM, and John Dillberger, DVM, Ph.D.
The Health & Genetics Committee gets several emails like this a year, so we thought it would be helpful to post this article for owners and their veterinarians, many of whom might not have dealt with cystinuria before.
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Last year, we published a post on a promising new procedure, Percutaneous Transvenous Coil Embolization (PTCE) for the repair of liver shunts. The first scientific paper has come out on this procedure, and Dr. Cassie Lux, Assistant Professor of Surgery at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Tennessee, very generously wrote up for us how the procedure works:
The SDCA Health and Genetics Committee has expanded the list of labs whose results will qualify dogs for CHIC (Canine Health Information Center) numbers. Even if you don’t want to get CHIC numbers on your dogs, the list of labs below is a resource for anyone who wants to test their dogs for Factor VII deficiency or a liver shunt.
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Deerhounds, like many other breeds, can have congenital liver shunts. Here is more information about that condition.
Update: This procedure is now available at several locations around the country, and we have published additional information on it here and here.
Some promising news regarding correcting portosystemic shunts in dogs comes from U.C. Davis, where Dr. Bill Culp has developed a new, non-invasive way to close intrahepatic shunts, which historically have been difficult to correct surgically.
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Although seizures are not common in Deerhounds, they do occur.
The SDCA Health and Genetics Committee recommends that the following health tests be done on Deerhounds: