Hey everyone Dr. Leigh here from Your Vet Online and I just wanted to have a very
quick talk to you all about some of the scare posts that I've been seeing on
Facebook regarding flea and tick treatments. Yes, it is possible that some
of these cases are very very sad and animals have died maybe or they've had a
problem after receiving these products however I
just wanted to point out a few things that we need to consider when trying to
work out whether it was a product that caused the issue or that it might have
been just something else so yeah let's get right to it let's just clarify a few
things number one all drugs can cause an adverse reaction
now some drugs are actually contraindicated in certain situations so
that might be that your animal or you personally because this applies to
humans too might have a kidney disease or you might have liver problems or you
yeah you might actually be allergic to penicillin
so um how many times had like would you actually want penicillin or augmentin if
you're more familiar with that term to be removed from society because some
people have an allergic reaction to it this is a type of thing that we're up
against not all all drugs
to basically be registered in this country require really rigorous testing
and the APVMA handles all of that I have put a link up the top that
actually if you have a problem and you want to report a drug reaction you can
do that so use that link and that will take you through to their website and
you can go and report any reactions that is a far better way of doing it than
just complaining on Facebook the other thing I really want to point out and try
and help you understand is the difference between correlation
and causation this is a biggie and it's something that so many people tend to
get wrong I'm going to give you an example imagine that you're flying from
Sydney to Brisbane you're on that plane and you receive some food you might have
lunch you get off the plane at the other end and you have profuse vomiting and
diarrhea now you've obviously got food poisoning
do you turn around and say that flying gives you food poisoning of course you
don't that is correlated but it's doesn't cause for food poisoning and the
same goes for a lot of the drug issues that we see so imagine like often your
dog or your cat may have a problem or your horse and we don't actually know
its present so it could be that they have you've given it a feed of fatty
bacon and the next thing, and you've given it a medication for fleas and
ticks and the next thing you know your dog is in hospital with pancreatitis now
is that because you gave it the feed of bacon or is that because you gave it the
medication that is the type of issue we're seeing here I am definitely
not saying that drugs do not cause problems of course there are some drugs
that can cause issues for certain animals just like some drugs can cause
issues for certain people but we need to be smart about it now the best thing
that you can do is talk to your own vet because they have the history of your
pets they will be able to tell you that if they think a particular medication is
not good and safe for your pet so it might be that your pet has issues with
say it's kidneys so you have been warned that you should not give your pet
non-steroidal anti-inflammatories unless your vet says you can and this is the
issue sometimes when we find that it's very easy to buy these products from pet
stores off the internet but we do it without any background knowledge we're
not getting our veterinarians advice and I'm not saying that we're causing these
problems ourselves but sometimes a lot of these issues can be solved if you
have this particular discussion with your veterinarian it's also really
important that you you realise that sometimes adverse reactions happen
regardless just like the penicillin example people get given penicillin they
have a bad reaction those doctors were not going to trying to make you have a
bad reaction they were doing what they genuinely thought was the best thing for
you at the time the same goes for veterinarians we do not like to see pain
and suffering so guys bottom line talk to your vet about whether what
medications are best for your particular pet and if you have problems go to the
APVMA website and report the issue that's really really important don't
just leave it up to your vet you need to report these things and remember
scaremongering does no one any good these drugs are safe otherwise they
would not be registered in our country alright guys that's my little rant
for the day I hope you have a good one catch you later bye