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News: Telemedicine

In recent years there have been many advances to diagnosing diseases in our pets. Ultrasound and X-rays have been around for years. Board-certified veterinary specialists are more frequently performing CT, MRI, nuclear scans, spinal taps, and other tests on our pets. One of the newest advances is called telemedicine.

Telemedicine is using a computer and the internet to send images to board-certified experts in a variety of areas such as internal medicine, ophthalmology, cardiology, dental, radiology, surgery, large animal, oncology, cytopathology, dermatology, exotic medicine. The exams and tests are performed and the images sent to the specialists. Usuallywithin 24 hours the specialist will call and consult about the case regarding diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. Without your pet having to leave the hospital and with minimal driving and extra expense your pet will have a second opinion by a board-certified expert. Images that can be sent are copies of lab work, history, and physical exam findings, radiographs (X-rays), ultrasound images, cytology (cells on a slide), a photo image of a lesion, and a photo image of your pet. With a video capture card, video can even be sent as well.

Orange Villa Veterinary Hospital now has telemedicine capability, and frequently send images to specialists all over the country. With the advent of telemedicine, we can get an accurate, complete referral to a specialist, which may have taken weeks to get an appointment and with quite a long drive. With our scanner, ultrasound machine, and high quality digital camera, the specialists have almost as much data as if they were actually there.

If you are here in the hospital with your pet, please ask to see the telemedicine unit on our ultrasound machine. It is quite impressive and a great tool to get as rapid and accurate a diagnosis and treatment plan as possible.