What is ‘palliative care’?
Pet palliative care is a method for treating pets when a cure is not possible. Palliative care (or hospice) is a means to providing a pet with the best quality of life possible with the understanding that their disease cannot be fixed.
Palliative Care for Pets with Cancer
For pets with cancers, palliative care would involve keeping a pet comfortable. This could involve pain control, anti-inflammatory medications or supplements, anti-nausea therapies, home-cooked diets & more.
Palliative Care for Pets with Kidney Disease
Kidney disease often comes with symptoms such as nausea, reduced appetite and cognitive changes. These occur because the kidneys are not doing their job of removing waste from the blood and saving water. Instead, diseased kidneys allow too much water to pass causing dehydration. They also allow urea, a waste molecule to build up in the blood causing nausea. When a patient is nauseas, they are less likely to eat. When a pet does not eat enough calories, their body starts to break down their muscles to use for energy. This makes it even harder for the pet to do their normal activities, and if they have arthritis, reduced muscle can make arthritis pain worse.
For pets with kidney disease, palliative treatment may involve anti-nausea therapies, subutaneous fluids, diet changes and pain control. For pets with high blood pressure, treating them with blood pressure medications and other therapies can help them feel more normal.
Palliative Care for Pets with Arthritis
Arthritis or degenerative joint disease is a fairly common condition in senior pets. 90% of cats over the age of 12 have arthritis that is bad enough to be seen on x-rays. The other 10% likely have arthritis that does not yet show radiographic changes. Cats are especially good at ‘hiding’ signs of arthritis. This is heartbreaking as so many pets live in silent pain.
Arthritis is an unfortunate disease as it often perpetuates itself. A pet with arthritis will be sore. They won’t move as much to avoid feeling pain. When they stop doing as much activity their muscles get weaker. When muscles become weaker this allows the painful joint to become unstable and rumble around in even more uncomfortable ways. This then causes the pet to do even less activity, further perpetuating the cycle.
It is incredibly important to start treating pain as early as possible. When we treat arthritis pain early, pets stay comfortable in their daily activities. This helps them keep their muscles strong. This actually slows the progression of arthritis, allowing pets to live longer, more comfortable lives.
Palliative Care for Pets with Dementia
In pets, we call dementia ‘cognitive dysfunction syndrome’. It can show up as the following:
- Disorientation (not knowing where they are, staring at walls, getting stuck in places)
- Changes in how they interact with people or other pets (aggression, etc)
- House-soiling (urinating or defecating inside the house or out of the litterbox)
- Sleep cycle changes (waking in the middle of the night)
- Memory loss (no longer doing tricks they used to excel at)
- Activity changes (such as pacing in the house, whining etc.)
Dementia can be treated in dogs through diet, medications and management strategies (routines, house-layout, etc). Sometimes dementia actually has an underlying cause, such as high blood pressure. It is important to rule these things out first. There may be an actual medical condition that can be treated to keep your pet comfortable!