Quote:
Originally Posted by ladyjane  Better questions might be:
How common do you think it is?
And, if you think it is extremely common, do you think we need to start doing spinal taps on all yorkies now??
And, how do you think that seeing some cases on YT is giving you any kind of accurate research data? |
Oh my ! Well at this point there is no accurate research on things like Chiari for the simple fact of cost. As far as Taps go and MRI, I believe when a vet is presented with symptoms of brain tumor he needs to think outside the box each & every time as GME, Chiari and Brain tumor can all present exactly alike. So instead of the vet saying I think your dog has a Brain tumor what he needs to say is , there are couple of things this could be and fill the owner in on these other things so the owner can make an educated decision. When my Sassy was diagnosed with Chiari, had my vet said ONLY brain tumor my course of action would probably have been much different.My conversion with the Dr at WSU was frustrating as he said most of these cases go undiagnosed for that very reason. He also said until vets start looking outside the box we will never know but I believe there are many misdiagnosis with this condition and it is not rare. Stop and think how many we've seen here and thats just a few. How many get misdiagnosed is scary to think about and if we've seen the numbers here and some misdiagnosed you can only imagine that there are probably thousands we never hear about. Same for the teaching schools and Neuros as most owners will not spend $1800.00 for MRI & Tap if they think their dog has a brain tumor. They think , what's the point it will not save my dog and it will die anyway. So they opt to PTS when the majority of the time it wasn't even a brain tumor and the dog probably could have been saved. So I believe Education is the key.