Diagnostic Services

Diagnostic Laboratory

A pet that appears healthy can often be hiding symptoms of disease. Routine blood testing helps our veterinarians learn things about your pet's health that cannot be spotted during a routine physical examination. Abnormal values are often uncovered even when an exam is normal or when the client does not anticipate any problems with their pet, such as low thyroid, early-stage kidney or liver disease and anemia. Our extensive laboratory services provide information that is critical to a sick or injured pet. We have access in both our in-house and reference laboratories to extensive diagnostic testing, allowing pets to receive appropriate treatment in a timely manner. Our laboratory is capable of processing numerous blood tests, including chemistry profiles, blood glucose and complete blood counts (CBC). We also process pre-anesthetic blood tests, which are often necessary before your pet undergoes anesthesia or surgery.

Radiology

The ability to provide a range of imaging techniques is essential to diagnosing disease in patients who, for the most part, are unable to describe their symptoms. Radiology, the most common form of imaging, allows us to view the shape, size, and location of structures within the patient.

For excellent x-ray image quality, we have converted to digital radiology. Digital radiology is a new technology and produces better diagnostic images than the traditional film and plate radiographs.

Digital x-ray equipment has many benefits for you, your pet, our staff, and the environment.

The benefits for you:

• X-rays easily can be saved to a disk and sent home with you to share with the rest of your pet's health care team and specialists.
• As compared to x-ray film, disks are easier to store and transport.

The benefits for your pet:

• Images can be sent to specialists via email when a faster response time is needed. This ultimately allows your pet's health care team to easily collaborate and provide your pet with the best veterinary care possible.
• Since fewer radiographs are needed, exposure to radiation is greatly reduced. After the x-ray has been taken, the image density and contrast can be manipulated to enhance the quality of the image, and thus generally eliminates the need for additional x-rays.
• Fewer radiographs and no time needed for film development means less time that your pet remains on the x-ray table. Less time on the table means less stress for your pet!
• Our medical staff has access to your pet's radiographs almost instantly, since images appear on a computer screen within 6 seconds. This saved time is crucial in emergency situations and allows our staff to begin your pet's medical care more rapidly.

The benefits for our staff:

• Decreased exposure to radiation due to fewer radiographs.
• More efficient method of taking x-rays as compared to traditional film equipment.
• Eliminates the need for x-ray storage since all digital images are stored on a computer.
• Eliminates exposure to toxic chemicals used in developing x-ray film.

The benefits for the environment:

• There are no chemicals needed to develop the film, and thus no chemicals that need to be disposed of that would be toxic to the environment.
• There are no x-ray films, so there is ultimately less waste associated with digital x-rays.