Dermatology

April 18, 2011

Vocab:

Alopecia: loss of hair.
Cytology: the study of the microscopic appearances.
Otitis Externa: external inflammation of the dog's ear, always has underlying causes (allergies, or bacteria, or yeast growth) that cause it.

Although I have previously worked with the staff in the Dermatology (summer 2009), like all the rotations I have done I continue to be surprised on my first day. A collie with severe alopecia came in today, her ears, stomach and neck were very irritated. After helping restrain her, the student had to get different skin scrapes to look at with cytology. After lightly scrapping the paws, ears, and stomach with a blade and putting the cells in a slide she had to do the deeper scrapes. She literally had to scrap the dogs ears, paw, and stomach until it would bleed to get different blood cells (d). To me it seemed unreal that she had to do this while we just restrained and watched the poor dog in pain (f). The worst part was when they checked inside the dog's ear, because the dog had ear infections it was very painful for her causing her to yelp as they were doing this. The same pain was displayed in another dog who had only a slight ear infection on one ear. However, because both dogs were naturally friendly they never tried to bite anyone unlike the other dogs. I helped the student prepare the samples in the slides, and then helped her look at them. Today I learned that even though it has been a while since I have looked at cytology and prepared samples I am still able to easily do everything by myself (A).