Principais doenças articulares em cães: revisão de literatura

Abstract

The Obligatory Supervised Internship is a subject of the Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine course at the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, which aims to provide students with a period of experience and professional improvement. The experience took place from August 30th to November 17th in two veterinary clinics in the city of Recife, Pernambuco. During this period, it was possible to follow up 281 patients and about 379 veterinary procedures, including clinical care, imaging tests, laboratory tests, anesthetic and surgical procedures, outpatient procedures and animals hospitalized under intensive care. At the same time, a literature review on Joint diseases in dogs took place in order to add theoretical knowledge on the subject and realize its application in clinical practice during the period of experience in the internship, also contributing to knowledge in practice. This subject provided an interdisciplinary learning process covering several areas of activity of the Veterinarian in the Small Animal Clinic and it was possible to correlate the literature review carried out with clinical experience. Joint changes are highlighted mainly in synovial joints or diarthrosis, which have characteristic structures and are of great clinical importance. Joint diseases are divided into inflammatory and non-inflammatory changes. Inflammatory changes can be of infectious or immune-mediated origin, erosive or non-erosive, and among non-inflammatory changes, degenerative, neoplastic, traumatic and developmental changes stand out. They can be chronic or acute and among the main orthopedic signs observed is lameness and gait abnormality. Therapeutic approaches can be preventive or corrective surgical or non-surgical involving weight control, nutritional supplementation, exercise restriction, physical therapy and drug therapy with the use of NSAIDs, analgesics, intra-articular injections, regenerative medicine and physical therapy modalities of rehabilitation. Joint changes are quite common and dogs can be affected at different stages of life.