Background: Objective risk stratification models are used routinely in human critical care medicine. Applications include quantitative and objective delineation of illness severity for patients enrolled in clinical research, performance benchmarking, and protocol development for triage and therapeutic management.Objective: To develop an accurate, validated, and user-friendly model to stratify illness severity by mortality risk in hospitalized dogs.Animals: Eight hundred and ten consecutive intensive care unit (ICU) admissions of dogs at a veterinary teaching hospital. Methods: Prospective census cohort study. Data on 55 management, physiological, and biochemical variables were collected within 24 hours of admission. Data were randomly divided, with 598 patient records used for logistic regression model construction and 212 for model validation.Results: Patient mortality was 18.4%. Ten-variable and 5-variable models were developed to provide both a high-performance model and model maximizing accessibility, while maintaining good performance. The 10-variable model contained creatinine, WBC count, albumin, SpO 2 , total bilirubin, mentation score, respiratory rate, age, lactate, and presence of free fluid in a body cavity. Area under the receiver operator characteristic (AUROC) on the construction data set was 0.93, and on the validation data set was 0.91. The 5-variable model contained glucose, albumin, mentation score, platelet count, and lactate. AUROC on the construction data set was 0.87, and on the validation data set was 0.85.Conclusions and Clinical Importance: Two models are presented that enable allocation of an accurate and user-friendly illness severity index for dogs admitted to an ICU. These models operate independent of primary diagnosis, and have been independently validated.

Forty-eight dogs with histologically confirmed appendicular osteosarcoma (OSA) entered a prospective clinical trial evaluating treatment with amputation and up to 4 doses of carboplatin given every 21 days. The median disease-free interval (DFI) was 257 days, with 31.2% of the dogs disease-free at 1 year. The median survival time was 321 days, with 35.4% of the dogs alive at 1 year. Dogs with proximal humeral OSA had shorter DFI ( P = .016) and survival ( P = ,037) times than dogs with OSA at other locations. Dogs with lower body weights (<40 kg) had longer DFI (P = .0056) and survival (P anine appendicular osteosarcoma (OSA) is an aggres-C sive tumor that has a poor prognosis without treatment.1.2 This tumor has been estimated to affect 8,000 to 10,000 dogs annually in the United States, and accounts for 85% of all primary bone tumors in dogs.'.' Amputation, which rarely results in a cure but relieves local discomfort, has traditionally been the standard treatment modality. Because 80% to 90% of patients have microscopic occult metastatic disease at presentation, amputation is only a palliative pr~cedure.~.' The median survival of dogs with OSA treated by amputation alone is 126 to 134 days, and only 10% to 12% of the dogs are alive at 1 year.' Therefore, to improve survival, some form of systemic therapy is necessary.Recently, cis-diamminedichloroplatinum (cisplatin) has shown activity against OSA in dogs and people.',7-" The median survival of dogs receiving cisplatin after surgery improved to 262 to 325 days, and 33% to 45% of the dogs

In this prospective study, feces of dogs with diarrhea were compared with feces of normal dogs for the presence of Clostridium difficile, C difficile toxins A and B, C perfringens, and C perfringens enterotoxin (CPE). C difficile toxins A, B, or both were present in feces of 18 of 87 (21%) dogs with diarrhea and 4 of 55 (7%) normal dogs (P 0.03), whereas CPE was present in the feces of 24 of 87 (28%) dogs with diarrhea and 3 of 55 (5%) normal dogs (P 0.01). C difficile was isolated from 2 of 87 (2%) dogs with diarrhea but was not isolated from the feces of 55 normal dogs, possibly because of poor survival of the organism in fecal samples. C perfringens was isolated from the feces of 23 of 24 (96%) CPE-positive dogs with diarrhea, 52 of 63 (83%) CPE-negative dogs with diarrhea, and 39 of 55 (71%) CPE-negative dogs with normal feces. No correlation was found between C perfringens spore number and the presence of CPE.

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In both human and veterinary medicine, diagnosing and staging renal disease can be difficult. Measurement of glomerular filtration rate is considered the gold standard for assessing renal function but methods for its assessment can be technically challenging and impractical. The main parameters used to diagnose acute and chronic kidney disease include circulating creatinine and urea concentrations, and urine‐specific gravity. However, these parameters can be insensitive. Therefore, there is a need for better methods to diagnose and monitor patients with renal disease. The use of renal biomarkers is increasing in human and veterinary medicine for the diagnosis and monitoring of acute and chronic kidney diseases. An ideal biomarker would identify site and severity of injury, and correlate with renal function, among other qualities. This article will review the advantages and limitations of renal biomarkers that have been used in dogs and cats, as well as some markers used in humans that may be adapted for veterinary use. In the future, measuring a combination of biomarkers will likely be a useful approach in the diagnosis of kidney disorders.