Development and implementation of veterinary anesthesia medical quality standards for primary care.

Objective: The provision of general anesthesia is common in veterinary hospitals and procedures include some level of risk, up to and including mortality. A quality initiative was introduced with a focus on reducing canine and feline anesthesia mortality. This paper describes the development and implementation of risk-based medical quality standards (MQS) and resultant impacts on anesthesia mortality.

Factors associated with anesthetic-related death in dogs and cats in primary care veterinary hospitals.

OBJECTIVE To identify risk factors for anesthetic-related death in pet dogs and cats. DESIGN Matched case-control study. ANIMALS 237 dogs and 181 cats.

The power of practice: harnessing patient outcomes for clinical decision making.

The practice of evidence-based medicine (EBM) relies on the ability of veterinarians to evaluate clinical outcomes. Evaluation of clinical outcomes optimizes the patient care process by transforming what is learned about a population of patients and applying it to an individual patient. Veterinarians' ability to summarize and record relevant information from each pet encounter enables outcomes analysis, thereby transforming clinical data into medical knowledge.

Adverse events diagnosed within three days of vaccine administration in dogs.

Objective: To determine incidence rates and potential risk factors for vaccine-associated adverse events (VAAEs) diagnosed within 3 days of administration in dogs.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Animals: 1,226,159 dogs vaccinated at 360 veterinary hospitals.