Client's understanding of instructions for small animals in a veterinary neurological referral center.

BACKGROUND: It is not known how much information clients retrieve from discharge instructions. OBJECTIVE: To investigate client's understanding of discharge instructions and influencing factors. ANIMALS: Dogs and cats being hospitalized for neurological diseases. METHODS: Clients were presented questionnaires regarding their pet's disease, diagnostics, treatments, prognosis and discharge instructions at time of discharge and 2 weeks later. The same questions were answered by discharging veterinarians at time of discharge. Clients answered additional questions regarding the subjective feelings during discharge conversation. Data collected included: data describing discharging veterinarian (age, gender, years of clinical experience, specialist status), data describing the client (age, gender, educational status). Raw percentage of agreement (RPA) between answers of clinicians and clients as well as factors potentially influencing the RPA were evaluated. RESULTS: Of 230 clients being approached 151 (65.7%) and 70 (30.4%) clients responded to the first and second questionnaire, respectively (130 dog and 30 cat owners). The general RPA between clinician's and client's responses over all questions together was 68.9% and 66.8% at the 2 time points. Questions regarding adverse effects of medication (29.0%), residual clinical signs (35.8%), and confinement instructions (36.8%) had the lowest RPAs at the first time point. The age of clients (P = .008) negatively influenced RPAs, with clients older than 50 years having lower RPA. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE: Clients can only partially reproduce information provided at discharge. Only clients' increasing age influenced recall of information. Instructions deemed to be important should be specifically stressed during discharge.

Partial lateral corpectomy for ventral extradural thoracic spinal cord compression in a cat.

A 7-year-old, female spayed, domestic shorthair cat was presented for ambulatory paraparesis. No trauma history was reported. Myelography and subsequent computed tomography revealed multiple ventrally located extradural spinal cord compressive lesions possibly due to intervertebral disc disease. Compression at the level of Th3-Th4 intervertebral disc space was considered responsible for the paraparesis. The lesion was approached via a right-sided lateral partial corpectomy as described for dogs. Complete spinal decompression was achieved, as documented intraoperatively by visual inspection and palpation of the spinal canal. No surgery related complications were encountered and the cat improved gradually within 8 weeks after the procedure. At 1 year follow-up only a slight proprioceptive deficit in the right hind limb could be noted. This is the first report of partial lateral corpectomy in a cat and should encourage the use of this technique even in small patients.