ABSTRACT
Laryngeal paralysis is a well-documented cause of upper respiratory tract obstruction in canines. Diagnosis of laryngeal paralysis is usually made by visual evaluation of laryngeal motion whilst patients are under a light-plane of anesthesia. However, in human studies of laryngeal function evaluation, it has been shown that subjective scoring can lead to significant interobserver variance, which may cause false diagnosis. In this study, we propose to introduce a more objective method of assessing laryngeal function using GlotAnTools and Tracker software to directly measure laryngeal motion in anaesthetized patients. Additionally, two anesthetic agents, alfaxalone and propofol, were compared in this study to assess their relative effect on laryngeal motion and thus their suitability for use in this diagnostic process. This study was a two-stage, cross-over, 1:1 randomization, with two active treatment arms. Ten beagles (10-18 months, five males and five females) were exposed to both anesthetic agents and laryngeal motion was recorded using videoendoscopy. GlotAnTools and Tracker software were applied to the recorded images to measure glottal gap area (A) and length (L). A normalized measure of laryngeal function-computed as A/L-was created, representing the "elongatedness" of the rima glottidis. The glottal gap area was significantly reduced in dogs receiving alfaxalone. This study objectively establishes that alfaxalone impacted laryngeal motion significantly more than propofol and confirms the capability of these computational methods to detect differences in laryngeal motion.
Subject(s)
Anesthesia , Anesthetics , Propofol , Vocal Cord Paralysis , Anesthesia/veterinary , Anesthetics/pharmacology , Animals , Dogs , Female , Male , Pregnanediones , Propofol/pharmacology , SoftwareABSTRACT
Listeria monocytogenes, a well-described cause of encephalitis and abortion in ruminants and of food-borne illness in humans, is rarely associated with disease in companion animals. A case of urinary tract infection associated with an atypical, weakly hemolytic L. monocytogenes strain is described in a diabetic dog. The serotype of the L. monocytogenes isolate was determined to be 1/2a (3a), with the multilocus genotyping pattern 2.72_1/2a. A nucleotide substitution (Gly145Asp) was detected at residue 145 in the promoter prfA region. This residue is within the critical helix-turn-helix motif of PrfA. The source of the L. monocytogenes strain remains unknown, and the dog recovered after a 4-week course of cephalexin (30 mg/kg orally twice daily).
