Pass Along RJ
July 09

If you haven't already, you will be on the receiving end of a referral to a specialist from your regular veterinarian. Trust me, your first thought is going to be, ”Oh boy, this is bad.“ That‘s what mine was, when Josie‘s vet couldn‘t figure out what was wrong with her leg and set up an appointment for us with the orthopedic specialists at Iowa State University.

ut it doesn‘t have to be like that, and in many cases it isn‘t. Rather, your retriever is getting the opportunity to be seen by a highly skilled veterinarian who has devoted his career to a very specific field of veterinary medicine. Dr. Kyle K. Kerstetter, a board-certified surgeon who works mostly in orthopedics – and this magazine‘s consulting veterinarian – was kind enough to answer a few questions about his practice (Michigan Veterinary Specialists, www.michvet.com), vet specialists, and what a person can expect if they must take their retriever to one.

How many specialists are there, and in what categories?
”In veterinary surgery, which I‘m the most familiar with, worldwide that are fewer than 1,500, and that covers both large animal and small animal. If you look at some of the subspecialties, like cardiology, I don‘t even think there are a hundred worldwide yet. There are probably 100, 150 neurologists. It‘s something that‘s really just taking off. There are not enough training programs to turn out the number of specialists that the public‘s demanding. ”Just in our practice alone, there are specialties in dermatology, ophthalmology, cardiology, internal medicine, oncology, radiology, and others [see sidebar]. There are also veterinary pathologists, veterinary clinical pathologists,  parasitologists...there are as many ’-ologies‘ in veterinary medicine as there are in human medicine.“

Are most specialists in private practice or a university setting?
”They kind of work hand in hand at this point. The trend is toward private practice, and I think that just recently in veterinary surgery, specialists in private practice outpace the number in universities. And I‘d say that‘s probably universally true – off the top of my head, maybe sixty-five to seventy percent of specialists are in private practice now.“

Why would someone get a referral to a veterinary specialist? Is it a ”second opinion“ sort of thing, in which the specialist can make use of better equipment or testing in order to get a firmer diagnosis?
”For a lot of the things that I do, like the cruciate rupture, people in general practice can diagnose hose, but I do five to seven a week, and they may see seven a year, and they know that. So they know by sheer numbers that we‘re going to be more adept at treating them. The equipment we use at treating is quite costly, but that may be broken down among fifty cases a year [at the specialist‘s office] as opposed to five [at the general practitioner‘s office]. So it makes more economic sense, too. There are also cases where someone in general practice has done a very thorough workup and just can‘t quite come up with the diagnosis, and then they come to us for help, too.“

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