Animals can be ill and need Veterinary care for many reasons. The conditions can be more or less emergent, some can even be life-threatening. When an animal is in a life-threatening condition you can save the animals life just by having the right equipment near-by and ready to be used. This literature-study help you, as an active working Veterinary nurse, with which these conditions are that can show up in your emergency ward and what you should have near-by to give animals with acute life-threatening conditions the care they need. The author also looked at work tasks at the emergency ward and found out that in Sweden it is not defined who can and/or should execute them. Interviews were also done with nine of the largest small-animal hospitals in Sweden to compare the studies found with the Swedish emergency wards.

It is important to know what is normal in the wound healing process in order to determine what happens when a wound does not heal as expected. If the amount of bacteria in the wound gets too large the body will not be able to defend itself and it becomes an infection. Colonization and infection are common elements in wound management and it is often the Veterinary nurse role to deal with wounds in a proper manner. Antibiotics are drugs that either kill or inhibit the multiplication of bacteria or fungi, and have been in Veterinary medicine for approximately 60 years. Very few new antibiotics are introduced and increased resistance is a major problem that requires everyone to take responsibility to reduce the use of it.

Pheromones are chemical substances representing very specific signal messages within a species. Although a lot remains unknown about their precise effects, it is known that pheromones influence the behaviour of the receiver. Since the mid 1990s, when it was first possible to synthesise analogues of two fractions of feline facial pheromone, F3 (Feliway®) and F4 (Felifriend®), these have been used in so called pheromonotherapy to treat behavioural problems in cats. The initial use of pheromones for specific behavioural problems has been extended to cover the wide field of stress related issues. This studycontains a questionnaire where Veterinary nurses and surgeons at 50 Swedish Veterinary hospitals and clinics were asked about their use of synthetic analogues to feline facial pheromones in the care and treatment of cats.

The most suitable method to answer the issues of this study was to do a combined literature- and questionnaire study. The literature part of the study was based on Original Research articles, Review Articles and books with a list of reference literature after each chapter and the purpose was to answer the questions ?What feed items should be given to rabbits in different life stages? and ?Which problems may develop from an inadequate diet?? Two questionnaires were constructed. One was sent by e-mail to small animal Veterinary hospitals to be answered anonymously by Veterinary nurses. The other was linked to from two internet forums, that with rabbits as their focus.

Surgical site infections are a recurrent problem in Veterinary medicine. A 2-5 % infection rate in clean surgery has been reported. During the last years the increase in methicillin resistant staphylococci has also taken its toll on Veterinary medicine, demanding a stricter hygiene and antibiotic regime. The 2008 outbreak of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at the University animal hospital, Swedish University of Agriculture indicated that that the MRSA problem was now a real, possibly zoonotic problem.Since the first dog, in Sweden, was diagnosed as a carrier of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus pseudintermedius (MRSP) in a study in 2006, the infection rate by this bacterium has increased. In 2009 (January 1st - December 2nd) the National Veterinary Institute (SVA) has identified 58 samples as MRSP positive.

Photodynamic therapy is a relatively new treatment for superficial squamous cell carcinoma in cats. There are no publications indicating that the method is being used in Veterinary practice in Sweden at the present time. The method uses the interaction between a photosensitive agent which has been administered to the tumor area, light of a wavelength that can be absorbed by the photosensitiser and the presence of oxygen. In this study photodynamic treatments were performed at the Queen?s Veterinary School Hopital of Cambridge University between 1998 and 2002.

As a pet owner you are likely to someday face the decision to euthanize your pet and as a veterinarian or Veterinary technician you are the one to perform this euthanasia. The reason for euthanasia may be depending on the animal, for instance illness, age and behavioral problems or depending on the needs of the owner or the society, so called convenience euthanasia. Many different euthanasia methods can be used when putting an animal to sleep. The method preferred in animal hospitals is pharmacological euthanasia either by inhalation of anesthetics or by injection of a euthanasia agent. If the pet owner wishes to be present during the procedure it is important to prepare him for what will happen. Many animals are sedated before the euthanasia in order to reduce anxiety and to ensure a softer transition between life and death. The euthanasia agent can then be administrated for instance intravenously or intraperitonealy.

Background: In small animal healthcare fluid therapy is an important area. To get an adequate treatment there are several factors that may play important roles in this matter. One of these factors is the correct use of the administration technique. Aim: The aim was to investigate how correct the amount of prescribed fluid was given when different people set up a fluid administration set. Method: An experimental study was performed to compare two different infusion techniques.

The aim of the project was to investigate if Swedish rodents, brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), house mouse (Mus musculus), wood mouse (Apodemus spp) and water vole (Arvicola terrestris) captured in pig herds and in urban areas, constitute a reservoir for pathogenic Leptospira spp. Under Swedish conditions leptospirosis gives rise to reproductive disorders in pigs and symptoms of flu in humans. It has long been established that rodents are chronic carriers of pathogenic leptospires in their kidneys, and can spread the bacteria with urine. The old nomenclature of serovoars is still in use, but a new system of genetic classification has developed and today the genus Leptospira contains 17 species. There are several diagnostic test developed for leptospirosis.

The aim of the project was to investigate if Swedish rodents, brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), house mouse (Mus musculus), wood mouse (Apodemus spp) and water vole (Arvicola terrestris) captured in pig herds and in urban areas, constitute a reservoir for pathogenic Leptospira spp. Under Swedish conditions leptospirosis gives rise to reproductive disorders in pigs and symptoms of flu in humans. It has long been established that rodents are chronic carriers of pathogenic leptospires in their kidneys, and can spread the bacteria with urine. The old nomenclature of serovoars is still in use, but a new system of genetic classification has developed and today the genus Leptospira contains 17 species. There are several diagnostic test developed for leptospirosis.

There are several different kinds of bacteria that has developed resistance against the antibiotic agents used in todays medicine. Most of them has evolved from the human health care but several of them has gone over to also cause problems in the animal health care. They often occur as nosocomial infections and the greatest risk of exposure to them is during health care. Since infections with a resistant bacterium can be difficult to treat, it is desirable to prevent this spread, especially since an animal treated in a hospital often is more susceptible to infection, due to their primary condition. In Sweden the current resistance situation is good and is yearly monitored by the Swedish Veterinary Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring (SVARM) programme.

The aim of the project was to investigate if Swedish rodents, brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), house mouse (Mus musculus), wood mouse (Apodemus spp) and water vole (Arvicola terrestris) captured in pig herds and in urban areas, constitute a reservoir for pathogenic Leptospira spp. Under Swedish conditions leptospirosis gives rise to reproductive disorders in pigs and symptoms of flu in humans. It has long been established that rodents are chronic carriers of pathogenic leptospires in their kidneys, and can spread the bacteria with urine. The old nomenclature of serovoars is still in use, but a new system of genetic classification has developed and today the genus Leptospira contains 17 species. There are several diagnostic test developed for leptospirosis.

Our companion animals can, with or without symptoms, carry infectious agents which have a potential to induce diseases in man, so called zoonoses. An immune compromised person has an increased risk of becoming infected by various agents, and thus also has an increased risk to become infected by one?s own companion animals. A study was carried out within the Veterinary program at SLU, Sweden, based on a questionnaire answered by 31 physicians, 31 veterinarians and interviews of 30 immune compromised persons in Sweden. The study investigated the following questions: Which zoonoses do physicians and veterinarians consider to be the most important to inform immunecompromised persons about? How are immunecompromised persons being informed by their physicians about the risk of catching zoonoses from their companion animals? How are the owners of zoonosis-infected animals being informed by their veterinarians about zoonoses? Does Veterinary medicine and human medicine communicate about zoonoses, in order to take the best care of immunecompromised persons in contact with animals? The results of our study imply that: - Physicians and veterinarians differ about which zoonoses immunecompromised persons should be informed about. - Only oral information is passed to immunecompromised persons and animal owners.

Cancer is one of the most feared diseases in Veterinary medicine today, and the incidence is higher than ever due to the fact that our companion animals live longer then they did ten to twenty years ago. Cancer is also one of the most common causes of mortality in older companion animals. This literature review will be about two of the currently most common form of cancer treatment of companion animals in Swedish animal hospitals, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. There will also be a section of general nursing care for cancer patients. The section of chemotherapy will describe the indications for choosing chemotherapy, the way to administrate chemotherapeutic drugs, describe specific chemotherapeutic drugs, potential side effects of chemotherapy, and how to handle and store chemotherapeutic drugs safely. The section of radiation therapy will describe the current devices for delivering radiation therapy, describe the indications for choosing radiation therapy and describe potential side effects that radiation therapy may cause.

The analysis of acute phase protein serum amyloid A (SAA) has recently been brought into clinical use in Veterinary medicine. Some of the difficulties with incorporating the SAA method in clinical practice have been the expensive and rather large equipment required for the method. Due to these difficulties only larger clinics can afford to use the SAA analysis.The company Equinostic has recently developed a smaller instrument that costs one-tenth of a larger instrument. The instrument is named EVA1 and has so far only been used to analyze SAA in horses.The aim of this study was to investigate if the EVA1 instrument could be used to analyze SAA in cats. This study included 24 serum samples from cat, which were first analyzed twice on the EVA1 instrument and then sent to the Strömsholm Referral Animal Hospital in Sweden where they reanalyzed the samples using a validated reference method.