Internal Medicine.

Internal medicine is a vital but sometimes underappreciated aspect of our profession. Thorough and diligent medicine allows us to:

1. Approach your pet’s health issues in a systematic and logical way.
2. Recommend and carry out the diagnostics that are most suitable for your pet and most likely to yield results.
3. Prioritise health issues and treat each one according to need, to achieve minimal medical side effects.
4. Work with our surgical and emergency teams in order to achieve the BEST outcome possible for your family member.

​The medical diagnostics that we offer include: 

• Abdominal and thoracic ultrasound 
• Digital radiography/x-rays
• Radiographic contrast studies
• Full video endoscopy and basic laparoscopy for retrieval of foreign bodies, visualisation of lesions and biopsies 
• Cerebral spinal fluid tap 
• Full IDEXX in-house blood testing
• Infectious disease testing
• Urinalysis (analysis of the urine)
• Cytology (the study of cells) and more.

Endoscopy is a means by which we can look inside our patient's body through a long tube with a lens connected to a video camera. The endoscope can be inserted directly into the affected organ or body cavity and enables the vet to visualise exactly what is going on inside your pet, such as inflammation or a foreign body. It's a very helpful diagnostic tool that helps vets develop the most appropriate treatment plan for your pet.

Ultrasound is a form of medical imaging where a probe issues high-frequency sound waves that echo off different tissues and form an image. For this non-invasive technique, all we have to do is clip an area of your pet's fur so the probe can be applied directly onto the skin, and we can get a picture of what's going on inside your pet's chest or abdomen. This is a very helpful diagnostic tool for everything from pregnancies to tumours and heart conditions, and there's no exposure to radiation, as there is with x-rays.

In-house blood testing consists of analysis of your pet's blood's biochemistry and/or haematology. Biochemistry testing tells us what levels of different substances are found in your pet's blood, such as hormones and enzymes, which can indicate how well their liver and kidneys are functioning, for example. Haematology often involves a Complete Blood Count (CBC) in which our machines count the numbers of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and so on, contained within a sample. This can help us diagnose diseases such as anaemia. We can also study blood samples under the microscope to identify any abnormalities.

We also have the capacity to send away samples for analysis by external laboratories, should there be a need.