At Prairie View Animal Hospital our goal is to provide your pet with the best quality care. This is achieved using the medical history that you give to us, our physical exam, and laboratory diagnostic testing. Laboratory testing is used to provide wellness screenings, pre-anesthetic screenings, and diagnostics for our sick or injured patients.
We utilize our onsite clinical laboratory which can provide us with blood chemistries, complete blood counts, urinalysis, fecal examinations, and screening tests for certain common viruses and other infectious diseases. We also utilize outside laboratories for more comprehensive or specialized testing.
Wellness screenings are utilized to find disease in our pets that otherwise appear healthy. This may include bloodwork, fecal examinations, and urine examinations. The ability to diagnose disease before symptoms start have given veterinarians and pet owners the chance to enhance the quality of life for our pets. For example, when we diagnose heartworm disease before the pet is coughing and showing other signs of heart failure, the ability to recover from the disease may be easier on the pet. Wellness screenings are also used to help prevent the spread of disease to other animals, as well as people. An annual fecal examination, for example, can help us detect roundworms, which potentially can spread to people.
Pre-anesthetic screenings are used to give us as much information that we can gather to ensure that anesthesia goes smoothly. Along with our presurgical examination, bloodwork can help us detect problems that may put our patients at an increased risk for anesthesia.
Finally, laboratory testing can aid us in the diagnosis of sick or injured pets. We can assess organ function, problems with red and white blood cells, and screen for infectious diseases.