Program for Saturday, January 25

8:00-8:50 am / When that Itchy Dog is Not Allergy!

See diagnostic approach in session 1. Session 2 is a case series of pruritic dogs that (spoiler alert!) are not atopic! These dogs would have been misdiagnosed had a systematic approach not been pursued.

10:30-11:20 am /  Fleas, Ticks, and Tick-Borne Disease: What’s New and What Can We Do?

Part 1: focus on biology of fleas, flea-vectored pathogens, tick biology and identification, and tick-vectored pathogen epidemiology

11:30-12:20 pm / Fleas, Ticks, and Tick-Borne Disease: What’s New and What Can We Do?

Part 2: continuation from part 1 to discuss diagnostic strategies and hurdles for tick-borne infections, treatment options, blocking of pathogen transmission, and environmental management strategies

2:00-2:50 pm / Heartworm Highlights: Updates Regarding Diagnosis, Treatment, and  Prevention

This session will review heartworm biology, discuss the diagnostic strategies involved in detecting canine and feline infection, and cover treatment and prevention options. New findings from the 2019 AHS symposium will be integrated.

**Sessions Sponsored by Zoetis**

3:00-3:50 pm / Portosystemic Shunts: Where are We Today?

Portosystemic shunts are a dynamic condition that dogs and cats are diagnosed with, resulting in a variety of clinical manifestations. Treatment options vary and are based on clinical signs, but should be tailored to stabilize the biochemical alterations that occur as a result of the condition.

4:00-4:50 pm / Surgical Pain Management

Surgical pain management is imperative to provide our patients with the best chance of success and decreased risk of morbidity associated with surgical intervention. Surgical pain management includes a variety of modalities and methods, of which each will be discussed in this lecture.

8:00-8:50 am / Advancing Traceability Through Electronic Identification: Learning Demonstration

10:30-11:20 am / New Advancements in Veterinary Ophthalmology – A Look at New Therapies and Treatments being used in Veterinary Ophthalmology

11:30-12:20 pm / What’s Hot in Veterinary Neurology

12:20-1:20 pm / What’s Hot in Veterinary Oncology

**Sessions Sponsored by Innovarius**

11:30-12:20 pm / Rabbits, guinea pigs, and Other Pocket Pets

What do you do when your clients walks in something other than their dog and they expect you to do something about it. Common conditions and treatments of commonly owned pets.

12:20-1:20 pm / Avian and Reptile Basics

What do you do when your client expects you to do something rather than refer it?  Some common medical and husbandry situations and how to deal with them.

7:00-7:50 am / One Health: The Ties That Bind

The health of humans, animals, and environments are interconnected in ways we are just starting to fully understand. These shared health threats (e.g., infectious zoonotic pathogens, environmental degradation, and pollutants) along with their potential solutions will be fully realized by using a transdisciplinary—holistic—approach. This is One Health. In this talk, we will discuss the why, what, where, how, and who of One Health with emphasis on the role of veterinarians within the growing One Health movement.

10:00-10:50 am / Endocrine Disruptive Chemicals on Wildlife and Humans

In recent years the impact that environmental toxins with endocrine disrupting capabilities, or the endocrine disruptor chemicals (EDCs), have on the health and reproductive fitness of humans and other animals has become increasingly appreciated.  These EDCs are found in a wide range of products from drugs, pesticides, consumer products (e.g., tin cans and receipt paper), industrial by-products and pollutants, and all types of plastics, including microbeads. Using data from studies that the author has conducted on bisphenol-A (BPA)—probably the most well-known EDC—showing its impacts on turtle sex and behavior, insight into how EDCs are threatening both wildlife conservation and human health will be shared.

11:30- 12:20 pm / Conservation for the Private Practitioner

Veterinarians working in private practice may be on the front line of conservation.  Through a “CPR” approach using effective communication, programs, and resources, it is private practitioners that may help to advance conservation initiatives. Specific ways in which private practitioners contribute may include 1) conservation outreach and education; 2) understanding and sharing exotic pet issues; 3) wildlife rehabilitation programs; 4) livestock-companion animal-ecosystem interface health issues; and 5) applying a One Health approach to ensure human health at the interface of wildlife, domestic animals and people. Using examples, we will explore this CPR approach and how to advance wildlife conservation through your hospital.

2:00- 2:50 pm / Turtle Conservation is One Health 

Using the speakers 20+ years of conservation and health studies of turtle species on land and in rivers and oceans, including studies of box turtles and river turtles in Missouri, leatherback sea turtles in Gabon, and giant tortoises in the Galapagos, we will explore the conservation and health challenges threatening turtle species today. In the presentation, we will look at how veterinarian medicine may be applied to help with the conservation of turtle species. Additionally, how this veterinary work should be viewed from a One Health perspective since the threats to turtles are also threats to environments, humans, and animals alike.

3:00-3:50 pm / How Veterinary Clinics can Identify and Respond to Domestic Violence

4:00-4:50 pm / Chagas Disease Updates

7:00-7:50 am / What Can and Can’t We Do with Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing in Food Animal

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing can present as somewhat of a mystery, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  An understanding of where the breakpoints come from leads to an understanding of where they do and don’t apply.

10:00-10:50 am / Central Nervous System Disease Therapy in Cattle

Polio, Listeria, and TEME present therapeutic challenges, especially based on when intervention occurs.  The literature is limited, but there is some guidance as to the use of antibiotics, steroids, NSAIDs, and other drugs for therapy.

11:30-12:20 pm / Therapy of Hairy Heel Wart and Footrot

Hairy heel wart used to be just for dairy vets to worry about, but not anymore.  This session reviews available data on treating both.

2:00-2:50 pm / Therapy and Prevention of Anaplasmosis

This session covers the source of common protocols and a review of efficacy data. 

3:00-3:50 pm / Planning Treatment Protocols for Bovine Respiratory Disease

BRD planning includes case definitions, therapeutic regimen construction, records evaluation, and monitoring for protocol drift.  This hour reviews available data to help you decide on key protocol components.

4:00-4:50 pm / What are we Being Asked to do Regarding Antibiotic Stewardship?

After the previous sessions, what is expected of practicing veterinarians in the area of antibiotic stewardship?  What is being asked of physicians?  What about companion animal practitioners?  

7:00-7:50 am / Field Surgery: Orthopedic

Not all orthopedic surgery requires screws, plates, and/or arthroscope.  We will focus on orthopedic issues that may be handled in the field

10:00-10:50 am / Field Surgery: Soft Tissue

11:30-12:20 pm /  Field Surgery:  Foals/Immature Horses

2:00-2:50 am / Performing an Equine Neurological Examination

Review of performing a thorough, practical neurological examination will be presented.  Performing and interpreting diagnostic testing will be discussed.

3:00-3:50 pm / Wobbler’s Disease: What’s New?

Diagnosing and management of Wobbler’s Disease will be reviewed.  Outcomes and prognosis of surgical intervention will be presented.  What’s new in the diagnostics and management of this condition will be discussed.

4:00-4:50 pm / Surgery of the Axial Skeleton….What Else Can Be Done?

Conditions of the axial skeleton that can be resolved surgically will be discussed.  How to diagnose and treat conditions such as temporohyoid osteoarthropathy, stylohyoid bone fractures, skull fractures, cervical spine fractures, rib fractures, and dorsal spinous impingement will be presented.

7:00-7:50 am / Be the Boss

Most good leaders have a strong common thread: we care about our team and want to help them succeed. However, in the day to day practice of life, we can be perceived by our team to be bossy, micromanaging, unfair, unrelatable, and, in general, difficult to deal with. The focus of Be the Boss, Not the Bitch is to understand how our actions can be perceived by the team, using psychology principles and examining extensive studies. We will then look at how we can make simple changes in our communication and work style to permanently ban these unflattering and completely untrue staff assessments. 

10:00-10:50 am / Managing Passive Aggressive Personalities

Passive aggressive personalities are one of the most challenging to work with, and even harder to manage. As veterinary professionals, we are often perplexed at how to deal with someone who intentionally undermines the practice but then feigns innocence. In this discussion, we will learn about the different types of passive-aggressive personalities, and why they behave as they do. We will discover ways to counter-attack the behavior, how to address it head-on, as well as ways to prevent this behavior in the first place (and it is preventable!).

11:30-12:20 pm / Are You Creating Your Own Drama?

This presentation focuses on the drama that we self-create by making things up in our mind or making assumptions about why/what others are doing.  I have found that many times people worry about things that have not happened by reacting to them as if they did.  This cause’s undue stress on team members and in many cases can cause a large amount of drama in the hospital.  I want to help people understand why we “make stuff up in our minds” and how we can stop doing it.  I want to help people learn how to deal with these challenging thoughts and how to make fewer assumptions about why other team members or clients are doing things.  This will help improve the communication flow of the hospital and encourage a better working environment. 

2:00-2:50 pm /  How to Inspire a Client/Employee Into a Behavior 

 3:00-3:50 pm / How to Inspire a Client/Employee Into a Behavior 

4:00-4:50 pm / What Do You Do When a Client Says No

This presentation focuses on how to handle client’s reactions when we want them to say yes to our recommendations.  I have found that most of the time we do not spend a lot of time training team members and even doctors on how to respond to the client when they tell us no.  This talk gives team members the tools and information on what they can say and how they can say it.  I discuss commonly requested procedures, products, diets, and other elective services that veterinary hospitals provide and how we can get the client to say yes more often.  I discuss the importance of getting clients to accept our recommendations and how that affects the pet, the client, the team members, and the overall bottom line of the hospital.

10:00-10:50 am / Responsibility or Blame: Know the difference for better teamwork

11:30-12:20 pm / Small Animal Low-Stress Handling

What can we do differently within our practice to make our patient’s experience positive and something our clients want to come back to and repeat annually? In this lecture, we will cover practices, methods, and tools to achieve patient and client satisfaction and compliance. Other subjects covered will be operant conditioning, classical counterconditioning, socialization periods and common restraint holds for dogs and cats.

2:00-2:50 pm / Hyperbaric Chamber and Case Studies (part 1)
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is a medical treatment that is very beneficial in a variety of clinical situations. The patient is placed safely and comfortably in a larger chamber. 100% oxygen flows into the chamber under pressures 1.5 to 3 times that of normal atmospheric pressure. Treatments may last from 1 to 2 hours and are given 1 to 3 times daily, with at least 4 hours between sessions. Most patients require no sedation and appear calm and relaxed during HBOT treatment sessions. The total number of HBOT treatments necessary will vary according to the type of disease and /or patient response. During HBOT therapy, very large amounts of oxygen are dissolved in the plasma. This oxygen can diffuse 4 times deeper into the tissue than oxygen carried by the red blood cells. During a treatment, oxygen from the plasma supplies tissue cells which cannot be reached by oxygen received from the red blood cells. This effect is unique to HBOT. In this session you will learn about the history and mechanics of hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

3:00-3:50 pm /  Hyperbaric Chamber and Case Studies (part 2)

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy provides a unique healing modality for may diseases and conditions. As with any prescription medication, oxygen therapy must be prescribed by a veterinarian. The most common effects for HBOT treatment are:
-Reduction in swelling and inflammation
-Stimulation of new blood vessel formation into the healing/inflamed tissue
-Reduction in pressure and edema caused by head or spinal cord injuries
-Improved control of infection and accelerated wound healing
-Stem cell multiplication and recruitment to damaged tissues
This session will provide insight to the positive effects and benefits of HBOT treatments and certain risk factors associated with 100% oxygen therapy under pressure.

 2:00-2:50 pm / International Health Certificates-Electronic Submissions using the Veterinary Export Health Certification System

3:00-3:50 pm / NVAP Module 18: Avian Influenza and Newcastle Disease

4:00-4:50 pm /  NVAP Module 3: Overview of Foreign Animal, Program, and Reportable Diseases