Multiple risk factors for the gastric dilatation-volvulus syndrome in dogs: a practitioner/owner case-control study

Abstract

A study was conducted of 101 dogs (i.e., case dogs) that had acute episodes of gastric dilatation-volvulus (GDV) and 101 dogs (i.e., control dogs) with nonGDV-related problems. The control dogs were matched individually to case dogs by breed or size, and age. Predisposing factors that significantly (p less than 0.10) increased a dog's risk of GDV were male gender, being underweight, eating one meal daily, eating rapidly, and a fearful temperament. Predisposing factors that decreased the risk of GDV significantly were a "happy" temperament and inclusion of table foods in a usual diet consisting primarily of dry dog food. The only factor that appeared to precipitate an acute episode of GDV was stress.

Are Dogs Fed a Kibble-Based Diet More Likely to Experience an Episode of Gastric Dilatation Volvulus Than Dogs Fed an Alternative Diet?

“…However, this aspect of the study does not suffer from a lack of comparator so this finding should be taken forward to the final evaluation. Although Ragahavan et al (2004) report that there was no significant effect of feeding kibble on risk of GDV, this study suffers from the same limitation as the Glickman et al (1997) study as all, bar two, of the dogs included were primarily fed on a kibble-based diet. The authors do extend their analysis by exploring the proportion of metabolisable energy derived from the kibble component of the diet (to account for mixed diet type feeding) to demonstrate that the proportions do not vary between groups, but this does not remove the limitation described here.…”

“…reduced the risk of GDV (Uhrikova et al, 2015), as did feeding table scraps (but not canned commercial food) as part of the diet (Glickman et al, 1997) or adding fish or egg supplements to the diet (Pipan et al, 2012). Several studies (Glickman et al, 1997;Elwood, 1998;Raghavan et al, 2004;Uhrikova et al, 2015) reported collecting data on dry and moistened kibble diets, but only one paper (Glickman et al, 1997) reported their findings specifically in relation to dry kibble versus moistened kibble.…”

“…Several studies (Glickman et al, 1997;Elwood, 1998;Raghavan et al, 2004;Uhrikova et al, 2015) reported collecting data on dry and moistened kibble diets, but only one paper (Glickman et al, 1997) reported their findings specifically in relation to dry kibble versus moistened kibble. They found that moistening the dry kibble diet before feeding did not affect risk of GDV compared with feeding dry kibble only.…”

“…These papers do not neatly address the PICO as the dogs studied either all/almost all were fed a kibble only diet or kibble as the primary diet (Glickman et al, 1997;Ragavan et al, 2004) or fed different diet types in combination (Theyse et al, 1998;Uhrikova et al, 2015) and/or assessed diet in terms of the maximum size of the food particles (Theyse et al, 1998;Uhrikova et al, 2015) that comprised the diet fed so the summaries of the experimental details should be examined for further understanding.…”

“…The first of these, Glickman et al (1997), intended to evaluate kibble as a risk factor, but found that almost all owners reported feeding their dog (irrespective of whether the dog was in the GDV or control group) mainly a kibble diet. The authors rightly note that, consequently, it was not possible to evaluate a dried kibble diet per se as a risk factor for GDV as there is no comparator (for example, of non-kibble fed dogs, what proportion develop a GDV compared to dogs fed a kibble diet?).…”