All three of these techniques are useful for detecting trends. Direct monitoring of blood pressure should be considered if accurate blood pressure measurement is required.

Suture remnants in the bladder have an important role in recurrent cystolithiasis in dogs. Identification of risk factors is important for avoiding recurrence of iatrogenic cystoliths.

Magnesium ammonium phosphate (struvite) is one of the most common minerals found in feline uroliths. Previous studies have shown the efficacy of acidifying calculolytic diets (inducing urine pH ,6·5), in dissolving struvite stones in cats. Recent work in our laboratory found that wet and dry test diets induce a struvite urinary relative supersaturation (RSS) , 1 and that the urine of healthy cats fed the dry test diet dissolved feline struvite stones in vitro. The objective of the present study was to demonstrate the efficacy of those test diets on naturally occurring struvite urocystoliths in cats. A total of twenty-one cats were used, of which seventeen completed the study. Of the seventeen cats, eight were fed the wet test diet and nine the dry test diet. Uroliths dissolved in a median of 18 (10-55) d. In the remaining four cats, uroliths failed to dissolve and were removed surgically. Quantitative analysis showed that these uroliths contained either calcium oxalate or calcium phosphate. The present study demonstrates that diets that induce a struvite RSS , 1 result in struvite stone dissolution in vivo.Key words: Feline: Dissolution: Struvite: Relative supersaturationIn cats, the majority of uroliths found in the bladder are composed of magnesium ammonium phosphate (struvite) or calcium oxalate (1 -3) . Surveys on the prevalence of struvite and calcium oxalate uroliths in stone laboratories worldwide indicate that the occurrence of those two stones represents approximately 95 % of submissions. Struvite and calcium oxalate are more or less equally represented, with a slight advantage to one of them depending on the country (1 -8) .The most important risk factors for struvite formation are urinary pH and urine dilution, which will affect the concentrations of magnesium, ammonium and phosphate (4) . Contributing factors to struvite uroliths in cats may include periods of inclement weather in which cats tend to remain indoors for prolonged periods of time, inactivity, and feeding of low moisture, non-acidifying dry cat foods (9) . In a retrospective case -control study, diets with high Mg, P, Ca, Cl and fibre, moderate protein and low fat content were associated with increased risk (10) . Previous studies have shown the efficacy of canned (11,12) and dry (12) urine-acidifying diets in dissolving feline struvite stones. A study in our laboratory has found that the urine of healthy cats fed a dry-extruded diet, formulated to generate a urinary struvite relative supersaturation (RSS) ,1, dissolved feline struvite uroliths in vitro (13) . Therefore, the present study was undertaken to confirm that diets inducing struvite RSS ,1 and effective in dissolving struvite stones in vitro were also effective in dissolving naturally occurring struvite stones in vivo. Materials and methodsCats were recruited from veterinary hospitals across Canada. They entered the study on the basis of clinical signs of lower urinary tract disease including, but not limited to, haematuria, stranguria, pollakiuria, inappropriate ...

Individual-level and dietary factors for dogs affected the risk of submission of CaOx uroliths, relative to that of struvite uroliths. Interactions among these variables need to be considered when assessing the impact of these risk factors. In addition, community-level or contextual factors (such as community family income and residing in a densely populated area of Ontario) also affected submission patterns, although most of the variance in the risk for submission of CaOx uroliths, compared with the risk for submission of struvite uroliths, was explained by individual-level factors.

Summary Three radioimmunoassays (RIA) for the pancreas specific proteins TLI, PASP and CA 19–9 were evaluated in serum from normal control dogs (n = 40) and dogs with pancreatitis (n = 20). Statistically significant differences (P < 0.05) were found for serum TLI and PASP levels between the control and pancreatitis groups. However, only 3/20 dogs with pancreatitis had serum TLI concentrations greater than the highest concentration in control dogs. Concentrations of PASP in serum were higher in 15/20 dogs with pancreatitis than in the control dogs. The magnitude of the increase in concentrations of PASP in pancreatitis was small in the majority of cases. Thus these assays are of limited clinical value in the diagnosis of pancreatitis. There was no cross‐reactivity with dog serum in the CA 19–9 assay.

2,8-DHA uroliths are extremely rare in humans and dogs. Such uroliths may be underdiagnosed in humans because of variability of clinical signs and difficulty in differentiating 2,8-DHA and urate uroliths and crystalluria. Uroliths composed of 2,8-DHA may be misdiagnosed as urate uroliths in dogs.

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