Veterinary Medicine: A Textbook of the Diseases of Cattle, Horses, Sheep, Goats and Pigs. examiner. An aggressive, paretic bull in broad sunlight can be a daunting subject if one wants to examine the pupillary light reflex; ophthalmoscopic examination of the fundus of the eye in a convulsing steer in a feedlot pen can be an exasperating task. Thus at one end of the spectrum is the clinical examination of pigs affected with nervous system disease, which is limited to an elementary clinical examination and necropsy examination. At the other end, neurologic examination of the horse with nervous system disease is very advanced. The global occurrence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has highlighted the importance of accurate clinical diagnosis in adult cattle with neurologic abnormalities. Discrete lesions of the central nervous system (CNS) resulting in well-defined neurologic indicators are not common in agricultural animals. Many Rabbit polyclonal to PBX3 diseases are characterized by diffuse neurologic lesions associated with bacteria, viruses, toxins, nutritional disorders, and embryologic defects, and the clinical findings of each disease are comparable. Rather than attempting to localize lesions in the nervous system, large-animal practitioners more commonly devote much of their time to attempting to identify whether an animal has diffuse brain edema or increased intracranial pressure, as in polioencephalomalacia (PEM); whether it has clinical indicators of BMS-708163 (Avagacestat) asymmetric brainstem dysfunction and depressive disorder of the reticular activating system, as in listeriosis; or whether the dysfunction is at the neuromuscular level, as in hypomagnesemic tetany. Radiographic examination, including myelography, is not used routinely as a diagnostic aid in large-animal practice. The collection of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from the different species and ages of large animal without causing damage to the animal or contaminating the sample with blood is usually a technique that few large-animal veterinarians have mastered. However, the collection of CSF from your lumbosacral cistern is not hard if the animals are properly restrained, and the information obtained from analysis of CSF can be very useful in the differential diagnosis of diseases of the brain and spinal cord. Referral veterinary centers are now providing detailed neurologic examinations of horses with nervous system disease, and the clinical and pathologic experience has expanded the knowledge base of large-animal clinical neurology. In spite of the difficulties, the large-animal practitioner has an obligation to make the best diagnosis possible using the diagnostic aids available. The principles of large-animal neurology are offered in this chapter, and the major objective is usually to recognize the common diseases of the nervous system by correlating the clinical findings with BMS-708163 (Avagacestat) the location and nature of the lesion. Accurate neuroanatomical localization of the lesion(s) remains the fundamental requirement for creating a differential diagnosis list and diagnostic and treatment plan. A disease such as rabies has major public health implications, and it is important for the veterinarian to be able to identify the disease as early as BMS-708163 (Avagacestat) possible and to minimize human contact. It is also important to be able to identify treatable diseases of the nervous system, such as polioencephalomalacia (PEM), listeriosis, and nervous ketosis, and to differentiate these diseases from untreatable and globally important diseases such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). The nontreatable diseases must also be recognized as such, and slaughter for salvage or euthanasia recommended if necessary. There must be a major emphasis on prognosis because it is usually inhumane and uneconomic to hospitalize or continue to treat an adult cow or horse with incurable neurologic disease for an indefinite period. If they.
