Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Treatment and survival in 34 Australian dogs with disseminated
By Lim, Yi Yu et al.·Published in Journal of veterinary internal medicine·2022·Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, Australia·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: A retrospective multi-center study of treatment, outcome, and prognostic factors in 34 dogs with disseminated aspergillosis in Australia.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of 34 dogs diagnosed with disseminated aspergillosis, a serious fungal infection, were studied to see how different treatments affected their survival. Dogs that received a combination of antifungal medications lived significantly longer, with a median survival time of about 830 days, compared to just 63 days for those treated with only itraconazole. Additionally, dogs with high levels of creatinine in their blood at diagnosis had a much higher risk of death. This suggests that using multiple antifungal treatments may improve outcomes for dogs with this condition, and monitoring kidney function could help predict survival.
People also search for: dog disseminated aspergillosis treatment · antifungal therapy for dogs · high creatinine levels in dogs
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Disseminated aspergillosis (DA) in dogs has a guarded prognosis and there is a lack of a gold standard treatment protocol. OBJECTIVE: To retrospectively assess survival times and factors influencing survival times. ANIMALS: Dogs diagnosed with DA from January 2007 to June 2017. METHODS: Disseminated aspergillosis case data were retrieved from 13 Australian veterinary referral centers, with a diagnosis confirmed with culture or PCR. Factors influencing survival time after diagnosis were quantified using a Cox proportional hazards regression model. RESULTS: Thirty-four dogs met the study inclusion criteria. Twenty-two dogs were treated with antifungal treatment and 12 dogs received no antifungal treatment. Accounting for censoring of dogs that were either still alive on the date of data collection or were loss to follow-up, dogs treated with itraconazole alone (n = 8) had a median survival time (MST) of 63 (95% CI: 20-272) days compared to 830 (95% CI: 267-1259) days for the n = 14 dogs that received multimodal antifungal therapy (test statistic 8.6;= 1; P < .01). The daily hazard of death (DHOD) for dogs with abnormally high serum creatinine concentration at the time of diagnosis was 7.4 (95% CI: 1.9-29) times that of dogs with serum creatinine within the reference interval. CONCLUSION AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE: Serum creatinine concentration at the time of diagnosis is a useful prognostic indicator for survival after a diagnosis of DA. The MST for dogs treated with multimodal antifungal therapy is longer than itraconazole alone and warrant further investigation (P < .01).
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35085412/