Supporting Triage of Infected Dog Patients in a Veterinary disease control unit: Epidemiological Analysis and Recommendations
Abstract
The University of Lisbon's teaching hospital houses a Biology Isolate and Containment Unit for the hospitalisation of both confirmed and suspected cases of infectious illnesses in livestock. The goal of the research is to determine and explain the most common infectious illnesses observed over the course of seven years in the dog population in "BICU". With the purpose of classifying cases of infection, the importance of a number of epidemiological parameters was examined. A total of 700 dogs were hospitalised throughout the research time frame, and 400 (58.3%) of them had a confirmed case of an infectious condition, including parvovirosis (50.0%; 230 dogs), leptospirosis (22%; 88 dogs), a multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infection (11%; 44 dogs), and dog distemper (9%; 36 dogs). Age under 2 years old (p = 0.001), inadequate parvovirosis vaccination (p = 0.001), age over 10 yrs old (p = 0.001), and overall existence of concurrent problems for MDR-infected individuals (p = 0.03) was also noted as possible hazard variables for such illnesses. To differentiate between cases as well as controls, logistical regression classifiers were built. For parvovirosis, MDR diseases, and distemper diseases, the estimations of both specificity and sensitivity are quite high (>0.83). The accuracy for detecting leptospirosis patients was poorer (0.77). In summary, as infectious illnesses are common, it is crucial to reduce their prevalence via efficient preventative measures.
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