Clinical description of dogs with seizures in a reference Veterinary Private Hospital in Canary Islands.

Abstract

Epilepsy is a clinical disorder characterized by seizures. Epilepsy is the most prevalent neurological disease and it estimated that affects between 0.5% and 5.7% of the population in dogs and cats. Epilepsy may be originated by multitude number of etiologies, such as: vascular, infectious/ inflammatory, trauma, anomalous disorders (congenital), metabolic/ toxic, idiopathic, neoplastic and degenerative disorders. This disorders generate physical/chemical alterations in the central nervous system leading to epileptic seizures. As a consequence of the numerous etiologies several diagnostic tests are required to confirm the etiology of the epilepsy. However, mainly motivated by economic reasons, many owners avoid the diagnostic tests and definitive diagnosis of epilepsy is not completed. Therefore, detailed data related to clinical history, anamnesis, and a complete clinical and neurological examination should be recorded in order to gather enough information for an approach to the more accurate diagnosis of the underlying disease. Motivated by this particularity of the disease that affects a large number of animals, we were focuses on knowing the clinical presentation, prevalence of every etiology and characteristics linked to gender, in the companion animal population of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Our data were collected using a questionnaire carried out on patients attended at the Hospital Veterinario Los Tarahales from January 2016 to May 2020. Only dogs and cats presented with convulsion episodes where included in the present study (n= 156). Any patients with a diagnosis of intoxication where excluded from this study. The main goal of our study was to describe the clinical presentation of epilepsy in our small animal population. For this purpose, data from the clinical history and clinical examination of the seizuring patients were used. Therefore, our specific objectives were the following: - Describe the distribution of the epileptic patients by breed - Describe the distribution of the epileptic patients by age - Describe the distribution of the epileptic patients by gender - Describe the distribution of the epileptic patients by etiology - Describe the most frequent clinical signs distributed in the pre-ictal, ictal and postictal period.