What is Pet Insurance?

The concept of pet insurance surfaced in the United States in 1982. Similar to some human health insurance plans, pet insurance typically requires full payment in advance for any services done, and then submission of invoices for reimbursement. Depending upon the type of plan, reimbursement might be partial or full.

Each insurance plan varies, but as a whole pet insurance often covers accidents and illnesses, and may even cover preventive or wellness care. If you are looking for a base plan, be sure to include accidents and illnesses, congenital and hereditary conditions, cancer, and chronic diseases.

Is It Right For Me?

You may be considering health insurance for your pet because they are ill, or you may just want to be prepared for the future since health care can be one of the most costly aspects of owning a four-legged friend. There’s no question pet health care costs can add up, especially if your pet has a chronic illness or requires surgery. With current medical and technological advances in pet health care, you will want to take advantage of the opportunity to diagnose and treat conditions early.

When your pet is young and healthy, pet health insurance may not be on your mind. But we recommend getting pet insurance early on in the life of your pet since pre-existing conditions are taken into consideration when applying. If you wait until your pet is aging or sick to consider insurance, you might have trouble finding a good plan that fits your needs. While there are a few insurance companies that will take senior pets or pets with chronic illnesses, the list is short.

Choosing A Plan

As with anything, it’s always a good idea to do your research on the various pet insurance plans out there. There are a variety of options and coverages available, and depending on the current health of your pet, or your particular concerns, you want to know what will be covered. We suggest you create a list of what’s most important to you regarding your pet’s health and work from there to find the right plan.

Once you’ve chosen a few of plans that match your most important concerns, it’s time to give the providers a call. Contacting a providing insurance company to get all the plan details, including the fine print, is a smart idea that will help narrow your options until you’ve discovered the plan that best suits your family and pet.

For a more comprehensive overview of the ins and outs of pet insurance, check out a valuable online resource called 365 Pet Insurance.  And if you’re looking for an experienced and compassionate animal clinic, we are confident you’ll be happy with our team at Anasazi Animal Clinic. We’re always willing to meet with potential new patients to answer questions and go over options for treatment and payment. Contact us today. We can’t wait to meet you, and to meet your furry friend!

Photo by Matthew Henry from Burst (5/7/2018)

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Senior Pet Wellness Checkups

When your pet obtains senior-status varies from the type and breed of animal, but most dogs are considered geriatric when they are around seven or eight years old. At this stage, it is imperative to provide them with specific nutrition and lifestyles to keep them healthy as long as possible. It is recommended that for senior pets, a checkup every six months will be beneficial to prevent any devastating health issues. A typical senior wellness checkup includes a thorough physical examination that examines various aspects of your pet’s health, habits, and nutrition. Tests for blood count, blood pressure, urinalysis, and x-rays may also be included. A senior wellness screen can also be done that will help detect any early health changes.

Symptoms to Pay Attention To

As your pet ages, there may be some signs to pay attention to that would be important for your veterinarian to know. These signs are:

• Eyes: If you notice redness, cloudiness, or see your pet bumping into things regularly or stumbling often.
• Urination: An increase or strain in urination can be a sign of kidney disease or a urinary tract infection.
• Breath: If your pet has bad breath, this can be an indicator of other underlying health issues.
• Skin: If there are lumps, dryness of the skin, redness of the skin or excessive loss of hair, this can be a large concern for other health issues.

There can be many health issues that arise as a pet ages, just as in humans. The best procedure is to continually keep on top of checkups to prevent any devastating finds, and to treat something if found early enough. To learn more about how to care for your aging pet, contact Anasazi Animal Clinic today.

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How do you know if there is a broken bone?

“If an animal is limping, holding its leg awkwardly, or if swelling or pain is noticed when a limb is touched, the animal should be taken to the veterinarian for assessment,” advises Dr. Harper. “If an animal has an open fracture, meaning there is a wound present and the bone is exposed, cover it with a clean, dry cloth to prevent further contamination of the bone and go to the clinic immediately.”

Fractures are very painful, so Dr. Harper advises owners to handle the pet with great care. A normally sweet pet may respond to pain by biting.

Dr. Harper explains that the process of fixing a broken bone in a pet starts with taking x-rays to determine where the bone is broken and how many pieces it is in. Fractures can be stabilized in a variety of ways, and the veterinarian must take into account the age of the patient when deciding how to stabilize a fracture.

For example, animals can have a cast on a limb just like people do. According to Dr. Harper, a cast would be an appropriate method to stabilize a broken bone if the fracture is simple and minimally displaced, located below the elbow or knee, and the animal is young. She says that a cast on a young animal will have to be changed periodically, because the animal will grow out of it. To be effective, the cast must stay clean and dry and the pet must be prevented from chewing on it.

Disadvantages of a cast include that it will not provide as much rigidity as other methods, such as an external fixator or bone plate, and that it immobilizes joints, leading to stiffness and requiring physical therapy for the pet to regain full motion of the joint.

Another way to fix a broken bone is by using what is called an external fixator. With this approach, the veterinarian will place pins through the skin and into the bone. These pins are connected externally by clamps and connecting bars or an acrylic column. This method provides rigid immobilization of the bones to allow the fracture to heal, while allowing the patient to use the limb in a normal way.

“A big advantage of an external fixator is that the placement and removal of the apparatus is minimally invasive,” notes Dr. Harper. “There is no surgical approach to the fracture site, and the soft tissues surrounding the fracture can be preserved. The patient just needs to be sedated, and the fixator can be removed or adjusted as needed.”

So how does a veterinarian determine when surgery is needed for a patient with a fracture?

Dr. Harper explains that this depends on the location of the fracture, the age of the patient, whether the skin is intact or there is an open wound, how many fragments the bone is in, and whether the animal has other orthopedic issues.

Typically a surgical repair involves bone clamps used to put the bones back in normal alignment. A bone plate can also be used, in which screws attach a plate to the bone. Pins are sometimes placed in the bone marrow cavity to help with the alignment, and the surgeon can also use wires.

According to Dr. Harper, most breaks heal in about 8 to 12 weeks, whether a cast, external fixator, or bone plate is used.

For more information about fracture repair, contact your local veterinarian.

Source – Dr. Tisha Harper

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Nicholas Andry coined the word “orthopaedics” in French as orthopédie, derived from the Greek words orthos (“correct”, “straight”) and paidion (“child”), when he published Orthopedie (translated as Orthopaedia: or the Art of Correcting and Preventing Deformities in Children) in 1741. Though as the name implies it was initially developed with attention to children, the correction of spinal and bony deformities in all stages of life eventually became the cornerstone of orthopedic practice.

In the US the majority of college, university and residency programs, and even the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, still use the spelling with the Latinate digraph ae. Elsewhere, usage is not uniform; in Canada, both spellings are acceptable; orthopaedics usually prevails in the rest of the British Commonwealth, especially in the UK.

Examples of people who aided the development of modern orthopedic surgery were Hugh Owen Thomas, a surgeon from Wales, and his nephew, Robert Jones.^[1] Thomas became interested in orthopedics and bone-setting at a young age and, after establishing his own practice, went on to expand the field into general treatment of fracture and other musculoskeletal problems. He advocated enforced rest as the best remedy for fractures and tuberculosis and created the so-called ‘Thomas Splint’, to stabilise a fractured femur and prevent infection. He is also responsible for numerous other medical innovations that all carry his name: ‘Thomas’s collar’ to treat tuberculosis of the cervical spine, ‘Thomas’s manoeuvre’, an orthopaedic investigation for fracture of the hip joint, Thomas test, a method of detecting hip deformity by having the patient lying flat in bed, ‘Thomas’s wrench’ for reducing fractures, as well as an osteoclast to break and reset bones.

Thomas’s work was not fully appreciated in his own lifetime. It was only during the First World War that his techniques came to be used for injured soldiers on the battlefield. His nephew, Sir Robert Jones, had already made great advances in orthopedics in his position as Surgeon-Superintendent for the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1888. He was responsible for the injured among the 20,000 workers, and he organised the first comprehensive accident service in the world, dividing the 36 mile site into 3 sections, and establishing a hospital and a string of first aid posts in each section. He had the medical personnel trained in fracture management.^[2] He personally managed 3,000 cases and performed 300 operations in his own hospital. This position enabled him to learn new techniques and improve the standard of fracture management. Physicians from around the world came to Jones’ clinic to learn his techniques. Along with Alfred Tubby, Jones founded the British Orthopaedic Society in 1894.

During the War, Jones served as a Territorial Army surgeon. He observed that treatment of fractures both at the front and in hospitals at home was inadequate, and his efforts led to the introduction of military orthopaedic hospitals. He was appointed Inspector of Military Orthopaedics, with responsibility over 30,000 beds. The hospital in Ducane Road, Hammersmith became the model for both British and American military orthopaedic hospitals. His advocacy of the use of Thomas splint for the initial treatment of femoral fractures reduced mortality of compound fractures of the femur from 87% to less than 8% in the period from 1916 to 1918.^[3][4]

The use of intramedullary rods to treat fractures of the femur and tibia was pioneered by Gerhard Küntscher of Germany. This made a noticeable difference to the speed of recovery of injured German soldiers during World War II and led to more widespread adoption of intramedullary fixation of fractures in the rest of the world. However, traction was the standard method of treating thigh bone fractures until the late 1970s when the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle group popularized intramedullary fixation without opening up the fracture.

The modern total hip replacement was pioneered by Sir John Charnley, expert in tribology at Wrightington Hospital, England in the 1960s.^[5] He found that joint surfaces could be replaced by implants cemented to the bone. His design consisted of a stainless steel one-piece femoral stem and head and a polyethylene, acetabular component, both of which were fixed to the bone using PMMA (acrylic) bone cement. For over two decades, the Charnley Low Friction Arthroplasty, and derivative designs were the most used systems in the world. It formed the basis for all modern hip implants.

The Exeter hip replacement system (with a slightly different stem geometry) was developed at the same time.Since Charnley, there have been continuous improvements in the design and technique of joint replacement (arthroplasty) with many contributors, including W. H. Harris, the son of R. I. Harris, whose team at Harvard pioneered uncemented arthroplasty techniques with the bone bonding directly to the implant.

Knee replacements using similar technology were started by McIntosh in rheumatoid arthritis patients and later by Gunston and Marmor for osteoarthritis in the 1970s developed by Dr. John Insall in New York utilizing a fixed bearing system, and by Dr. Frederick Buechel and Dr. Michael Pappas utilizing a mobile bearing system.^[6]

External fixation of fractures was refined by American surgeons during the Vietnam War but a major contribution was made by Gavril Abramovich Ilizarov in the USSR. He was sent, without much orthopedic training, to look after injured Russian soldiers in Siberia in the 1950s. With no equipment he was confronted with crippling conditions of unhealed, infected, and malaligned fractures. With the help of the local bicycleshop he devised ring external fixators tensioned like the spokes of a bicycle. With this equipment he achieved healing, realignment and lengthening to a degree unheard of elsewhere. His Ilizarov apparatus is still used today as one of the distraction osteogenesis methods.

Modern orthopedic surgery and musculoskeletal research has sought to make surgery less invasive and to make implanted components better and more durable.

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