The O3-Vet project: a veterinary electronic patient record based on the web technology and the ADT-IHE actor for veterinary hospitals.

A veterinary electronic patient record, compliant with the IT standards (HL7, DICOM and IHE), was developed at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Milan (Italy) in order to improve the veterinary hospital workflows, making the stored clinical data more homogenous and sharable, thereby increasing the integration with current and future software applications. The system was developed by open-source software in order to reduce the implementation and maintenance costs and to make the system sharable with other veterinary hospitals or research centers without additional costs. The system was tested from May to October 2006. Results show that the majority of the veterinarians involved in the test agreed on the advantages obtained by the use of application software concerning the availability of all the useful clinical data [71.4%], the quality of the diagnostic procedures [78.58%] and the efficiency [85.58%] of hospital activities.

Study on prevalence of bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV) antibodies in 29 Italian dairy herds with reproductive problems.

An epidemiological survey on prevalence distribution of antibodies to BVDV was carried out in dairy cattle herds during 1995-1996 in northern Italy. A total of 704 serum samples from 29 non-vaccinated herds reported to have reproductive problems were tested for serum neutralising antibodies. In each herd, sampling was based on the stratification by age into five classes (< 6 months old calves, 6-12 months old calves, pregnant heifers, uniparous, pluriparous). Overall, 53.3% of samples were serologically positive, with the lowest ratio in 6-12 months old calves (37.9%) and the highest in pluriparous cows (71.2%).

Recovery of Staphylococcus aureus from centrifuged quarter milk samples.

The identification of cows that are positive for mastitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus is difficult under field conditions. The frequency of isolation of S. aureus from quarter milk samples was compared with the frequency of recovery of S. aureus from sediment after centrifugation of those same samples. Overall, 776 quarter milk samples from 194 cows were studied. Cultures that were positive for S. aureus were obtained from 82 samples; 153 sediments from quarter milk samples were also positive for S. aureus. The results of this investigation showed that cultures of the sediment of quarter milk samples increased the number of positive outcomes up to 145.5%, depending on the herd. Using a different group of samples, including samples taken 1 to 5 d or 7 to 10 d after calving and samples taken after intramammary therapy, a 94% increase in cultures that were positive for S. aureus after centrifugation was found compared with cultures of the same quarter milk samples that were not centrifuged. Sedimented cultures may be useful in S. aureus control programs that require the segregation, selective treatment, or culling of cows that are positive for S. aureus.