Breakthrough Veterinary Products for 2010

Dr. Marty Becker, Good Morning America & GMA Health on ABC News

For more than ten years, Dr. Becker has been the popular veterinary contributor to ABC-TV's "Good Morning America." More recently, he has started appearing on the new "Good Morning America Weekend." He has also taped special features called the GMA Pet Clinic, which are one minute vignettes on topics such as giving medications, stopping bleeding and taking a pet's temperature. Which is why we went to him to find the breakthrough veterinary products for 2009.

Dr. Marty Becker is always looking for new, breakthrough products to help pets live happier, healthier, fuller lives, or those that make it easier for the pet owners who take care of them.

This year he polled 122 people and together, they’ve come up with a list of new, truly breakthrough products in veterinary medicine and those from the pet industry. There are tens of millions of pets who will benefit from their use.

Here is what he found:

Battling Bad Bugs – sleeping with the enemy?

Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is becoming a big problem in both pets and people. People and pets can ping-pong this contagion back and forth with the humans getting a lot more than giving. A study reported in the New York Times showed that 50% of households sampled at random had MRSA. Of those households, when they looked for common factors (thinking it would be gym memberships, children in daycare, people working in the healthcare industry or having recently had an infection) --- all of these came back negative. What they did find was IF you were a cat owner, you were 8 times more likely to have MRSA! Our goal is always: GET RID OF THE RISK, KEEP THE PET. So what can you do to reduce your risk of getting MRSA from a pet: don’t wash pet dishes in the same sink you use to prepare food; don’t let pets lick you on the face; wash your hands before (important to protect the pet) and after playing with pets; don’t come in contact with their feces (wear gloves when changing litter); cover open wounds; if pet has wounds that are oozing, red, swollen or don’t seem to heal, take them to a vet immediately! Bathe and/or spray pets with solutions like TrizChlor 4, which is a unique, patented anti-microbial shampoo and leave-on spray formulation that uses synergistic chemicals, tris-edta and chlorhexidene (commonly used liquid antimicrobials used for cleaning and flushing wounds, surgical scrubs, cold sterilization of instruments, throat lozenges, dental washes, etc.). Research indicates that combining the two substances amplifies the effects of both. TrizChlor 4 (covered by one patent with another pending) is the first shampoo and leave-on spray ever utilizing tris-edta (much less mixing it with chlorhexidene).

Cancer - starving cancer cells to death rather than poisoning them.

Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors (Pfizer and AB Sciences) – This comes from our friend, famed, veterinary oncologist Dr. Greg Ogilvie. These are amazing new classes of cancer therapies. Rather than poisoning cancer cells, these high tech products shut down the blood vessels that feed the cancer.

Light up my life - “beam me up on a Scotty” can reduce pain and speed healing.

Class IV laser therapy is the use of an intense, narrowly focused beam of light, directed at tissues to reduce pain and inflammation and accelerate healing. Laser therapy is the result of electromagnetic energy interacting both chemically and biologically with tissue, causing “photostimulation” or “photobiomodulation.” They’re also used extensively for wounds, fractures, abscesses, anal sacculitis, acute ear inflammation, sprains, strains, bladder infections, injection site soreness, skin inflammation and even venomous bites.

Mother Nature’s building blocks - using the body’s own cells to rebuild.

Stem cell therapy offers hope for pets that experience painful osteoarthritis or poor healing of bone, tendon and ligament injuries, by using the pet’s own stem cells to promote healing.

Giving Pets Medication – one shot lasts two weeks!

There’s nothing worse than having a sick pet where the owner needs to give their pet oral meds daily, leaves clinic with an expectancy that they’ll comply, but don’t. In practice we call this “Life happens…doses don’t.” Busy lifestyles, time constraints, and even forgetfulness can keep pet owners from giving pets medication at the appropriate intervals and the prescribed period of time. In a survey, 47% of dogs owners wish there was an alternative to pilling…and now there is! A new long-acting SQ antibiotic called Convenia solves this problem. An injectable cephalosporin for dogs and cats with a uniquely long duration of action (one shot delivers meds for two weeks!). The product is safe (more than 5 million doses have been given globally), powerful, and frees clients from the stress of trying to give meds to pets that don’t want to take them.

New treatment for AIDS – new treatment for deadly feline viral diseases

Feline immunodeficiency (FIV) and feline leukemia viruses (FeLV) are the most common life-threatening infectious diseases affecting cats. FeLV can cause cancer and various blood disorders and suppress a cat’s immune system, leading to life-threatening infections. FIV, like the human HIV virus, suppresses the immune system and lowers an infected cat’s ability to fight off infections. The USDA approved the first and only drug for the treatment of FeLV and FIV, ProLabs’ Lymphocyte T-Cell Immunomodulator (LTCI), which can extend and improve the quality of life of cats with these deadly viral diseases. LTCI works by stimulating the body’s own immune system, and appears to help the body fight off the virus itself. The drug is administered as a subcutaneous injection by a veterinarian once a week for a month. Injection frequency then decreases, depending on the individual cat’s response.

#1 way to stop dogs from eating #2

Nobody likes it when a dog treats its own (or another dogs) doo like a crap-atizer. If your dog brings an all new meaning to the word “Doggy Breath” there is help in the form of Copraban – PRN, a convenient, easy to use roast beef flavored soft chew used to deter coprophagia (stool eating) behavior in dogs and cats. Coproban may also be fed to cats to discourage dogs from raiding the litter box.

For more information about Dr. Becker, join him on his Facebook page as well as on Twitter. PetConnection.com
Listen to Dr. Marty Becker on Animal Radio®