[dwerten]

Originally Posted by capt_noonie

Uh, are you sure about that? Please see below:

When the pancreas is injured either from disease or from trauma, the production of digestive enzymes decreases, or the enzymes may actually start to digest surrounding organs including the pancreas itself.
"This disease mimics and can be mimicked by almost any acute gastrointestinal disorder as well as a variety of extra-intestinal diseases," says Colin Burrows, BVetMed, Ph.D, MRCVS, professor of medicine, University of Florida, Gainsville, Florida. "Severe cases are routinely included in the differential diagnosis." The most common ones are 1) acute gastroenteritis; 2) exacerbations of inflammatory bowel disease; 3) intestinal obstruction; 4) peritonitis; and 5) acute renal failure.
Pancreatitis is the disorder that happens when the pancreas becomes inflamed. There are two classification of the disease, chronic and acute.
"Basically, there are differences between chronic and acute," says Dr. Jorg Steiner, DVM, DACZIM, DECZIM, Gastrointestinal Laboratory Professor, Texas A&M, College Station, TX. "The most important, when acute pancreatitis is over, there is no remaining damage to organs. Acute is more commonly severe, and chronic is more commonly mild."
"Pancreatitis can be very serious," says Dr. Mary Labato, DVM, internal medicine, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, North Grafton, MA. "It can run the gamut from mild with vomiting to life threatening and the cause of rapid death."
"Acute pancreatitis is the inflammation of the pancreas that occurs abruptly with little or no permanent pathologic change," say Dr. Labato. "Acute necrotizing pancreatitis is a life threatening disease that can lead to acute renal failure, pleural effusion, and death. Chronic pancreatitis is a continuing inflammatory disease that is often accompanied by irreversible changes."

thanks just saw this and this is right on - an acute attack however can lead to chronic and the problem with it is it can lead to diabetes or epi if they keep getting it over and over so then you have another health issue to deal with and both of those are tough. The diabetes comes from the pancreas not being able to any longer control the insulin levels and epi is caused from pancreas enzymes no longer working so the dog can basically starve to death as they eat and eat yet the body does not retain the food and the dog starves to death slowly unless you supplement with enzymes which is not cheap so VERY IMPORTANT to have a handle on this from the first attack or you are asking for a bigger issue The other thing is steroids many times are used to treat ibd yet it can trigger the pancreas into an attack so these digestive issues are very importan to control with diet so drugs are not put into the equation. Luckily my dex is controlled with diet alone. The purina ha is a hydrolized soy diet that is broken down protein so it is easily digested. Any inflammatory foods like white potato should not be given. Ibd dogs do better on a grain diet than white potato or you can go with sweet potato as it is in a different night shade family and not inflammatory in nature. But see vets do not know all this as they know very little about nutrition and only relay on food manufacturers - I paid very close attention and limited everything and i happened to be pilling my other yorkie with white potato and gave him a piece a small piece as well as my maltese and both of them vomitted the potato and my boy yorkie vomitted alot that day and that is when i knew it was potato. and then i went back to my notes and noticed he got pancreatitis on ivd white fish and potato diet, then when we switched to dd salmon and potato after being on ultra zd for 2 months and being fine he got violently ill all common denominator WHITE POTATO. I googled and it is an inflammatory food so it was inflaming his small intestines as it backed up and all came up in vomit. He NEVER had diarhea so his is strictly in small intestines not large as I do not think in 6 years he has ever had diarhea. It was like the white potato inflamed his small intestines backed him up then whamo massive vomitting-- vomitting and diarhea means the entire intestinal tract is inflamed