You can rule addisons out pretty easily by first doing a baseline cortisol test. If baseline is within normal range it's not addisons. If cortisol is less than normal you would then do further testing. I just did this with lacy because of her GI issues and her cortisol was normal.
Most likely the high BAT is due to MVD or even a shunt. However it could be due to another issue with the liver. In our case lacy had hepatic lipidosis, which is uncommon in dogs but is probably related to IBD which is what she most likely has.
When we got high bile acids we did an xray, urinalysis, and blood ammonia test. Blood ammonia will be high with a shunt. You can also do a protein c test. I then chose to do an ultrasound because the radiologist is really skilled and we really didn't think it was a shunt anyway. You could also do a scintigraphy which is more accurate. Finally we did a liver biopsy. All this was done at a&m
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