Our specialist Dermatologists offer a comprehensive, friendly, referral service for small animal skin & ear disorders. We are also happy to advise and examine other species with dermatological problems. We treat every client and case as an individual and want to work closely with referring veterinary surgeons. We work alongside our fellow Specialists in anaesthesia, internal medicine and surgery to offer a first class referral and a holistic, multidisciplinary approach.
We provide Intradermal testing and individualised Immunotherapy formulations for our patients.
Laboratory services on site allow quick turnaround of results and the ability to speak directly to the laboratories about difficult cases.
We hope you find the questions below useful. There is also a list of more general questions in our General Info for Owners pages.
My pet's been referred for an intradermal skin test, what does this involve?
The test kit is prepared in advance.
Our kit comprises 50 everyday allergens including house dust mites, grass, tree and weed pollens. There is a positive and negative control and all results are compared to this.
Your pet will be sedated, to keep them nice and calm and ensure they don't feel any discomfort.
An area is clipped on their flank, to allow the dermatologists to visualise your pet's skin. The test site is marked with a felt tip pen, to show where the injections will be placed.
A tiny amount of each allergen is then injected into your pet's skin. The test is then read after 15 minutes.
Any positive results appear as wheals (see picture). This means that their immune system has had a strong reaction to one of the allergens injected into that part of their skin. The dermatologists will read this result and it will enable them to work out exactly what your pet is or isn't allergic to. They will discuss the implications of these results with you.
Don't worry your pet's skin will return to normal within a few days, and the hair will regrow quickly.
Delta is a 4 year old female neutered crossbreed, who presented to us with a long history of itchy skin disease that started shortly after she was acquired from a rescue centre. The worst affected areas were her feet, chest, face and ears.
As can be seen in these pictures the skin is lichenified, alopecic and hyperpigmented. Initially a large amount of skin infection was present. This was treatment with antibiotics and antifungal shampoo. A dietary trial was also performed to exclude the possibility of a cutaneous adverse food reaction.
Once ectoparasites, infection and diet had been excluded as causes for her skin disease we were able to make a diagnosis by exclusion of atopic dermatitis.
Allergy testing was performed which supported the clinical diagnosis and a course of immunotherapy was ordered for Delta.
Although Delta did improve with antibiotics she was still unacceptably itchy and so, as it would take many months for the benefits of the immunotherapy to be seen, treatment was started with ciclosporin.
Ciclosporin is a drug that helps suppress the immune response to allergy.
