3 Reasons Pet Wellness Screening Tests Matter
Although pets’ sensitivity to pain and discomfort varies, most are instinctively programmed to hide illness signs, a carryover from their wild ancestors. This means that, while your pet may go through their day-to-day life behaving relatively normal, they could be hiding a brewing illness or disease. Because pets are unable to express how they feel or whether they are experiencing minor changes, our Santa Monica Pet Medical Center team relies on wellness screening tests and examinations to provide us with vital information about your pet’s health status.
We recommend that, at least once per year, a pet should undergo routine wellness diagnostics, including blood work, urinalysis, parasite testing, and additional tests as needed based on their age or breed. This holds true for puppies, kittens, and adult pets. Because issues can crop up at any time, the sooner our team detects a problem, the better, as early treatments take less of a toll on a pet’s wellbeing and your wallet. Still, some pet owners may question the value of these tests when their pet appears healthy, or when the results are normal year over year. Learn the top reasons why routine wellness screening tests are vital to maintaining your pet’s health.
#1: Wellness screening tests provide a baseline for your pet’s normal values
Performing wellness screening tests on young, apparently healthy pets can help us learn your pet’s baseline normal. This is helpful because some pets’ normal blood work values may be slightly out of range, or toward the top or bottom of an established normal range. Knowing where your pet’s values lie on this scale when they are young provides us with a baseline to which we can compare your pet’s values if they get sick in the future because, if those out-of-range values are the same as previous tests, they are not likely caused by a new problem. Conversely, if we run blood tests on a young, apparently healthy pet and find values significantly and repeatedly out of range, we can look for a potential congenital or genetic issue before the condition negatively affects your furry pal’s health.
#2: Wellness screening tests detect early disease stages in pets
By comparing wellness testing results year over year, our Santa Monica Pet Medical Center team can track slowly trending values or identify those that change drastically from normal to high or low. Often, these are the first changes a chronic disease causes and will appear in a pet’s test results before they begin showing signs at home. If we intervene with treatments during this stage, our team is far more likely to slow or reverse the disease process.
Waiting until your pet is overtly ill (i.e., showing signs at home) to test for a chronic disease is less than ideal, because the condition has likely progressed significantly by that point. The more advanced a disease process becomes, the less likely is the illness to respond favorably to routine treatment and the more expensive the treatment. Detecting disease and starting treatments during the earliest possible disease stage has the potential to extend your pet’s healthy years.
For example, a pet who has chronic kidney disease does not show obvious signs until most of the kidneys’ function is irreversibly lost. Advancements in blood testing technology mean that routine screening tests can detect kidney disease from a few months to a few years before a pet exhibits illness signs. By starting treatment during this stage, our team can halt disease progression and add years to your four-legged friend’s prognosis.
#3: Normal wellness screening test results for your pet provide you with feedback and peace of mind
Many pet owners question if the care they are providing for their furry pal at home is enough to maintain health. Are you feeding the optimal diet for your pet’s age and activity level? Are you providing enough exercise? Are the parasite preventives you regularly administer working effectively? Wellness screening tests can provide an objective assessment of your pet’s internal health and determine whether you’re on the right track.
In addition, normal wellness screening test results can provide you with peace of mind, especially if your pet is aging or has experienced chronic or age-related disease in the past. Seeing those normal results each year can help you breathe a sigh of relief or take action to slow your pet’s disease progression.
Our Santa Monica Pet Medical Center veterinarians are compassionate, talented individuals who provide excellent care to pets of all ages, but we need to perform diagnostic tests regularly to determine how your furry pal’s body systems are functioning. Wellness screening tests provide the information we need to set up your pet for a lifetime of good health. Schedule your pet’s wellness examination and screening tests with our team.