Our in-house laboratory at Cornwallis Veterinarians provides a wide range of laboratory services.
For our companion animal patients (dogs and cats), we have blood analyzers that process samples for many routine chemistry tests, blood cell counts, electrolytes and specialized blood tests for thyroid function and pancreatitis. We also perform blood tests in our laboratory for various diseases like Feline Leukemia Virus, Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (Feline AIDS), Canine Heartworm Disease, Lyme Disease, Ehrlichiosis and Anaplasmosis. Being able to diagnose several diseases can be crucial to your pet’s health.
Our in-house laboratory can screen for kidney disease, liver disease, diabetes, anemia, infections and other conditions with results in less than 20 minutes.
Pre-anesthetic blood testing is strongly recommended at our practice in order to help us further ensure an informed and safe anesthetic event. We also recommend periodic wellness blood test panels for our senior patients so that we can establish baseline values, monitor trends in certain blood test values and identify early evidence of disease.
Other tests performed in our laboratory for pets include cytology, urinalysis, and fecal analysis for gastrointestinal parasites. Our dissecting microscope allows us to look at ticks to determine if they can harbour lyme disease or not, and we can examine mites, lice, and other ectoparasites. Specific disease testing is often referred out to different labs across North America.
We also routinely perform culture and sensitivity in our lab where we can determine which bacteria is causing an infection and then decide the appropriate antibiotic to clear the infection. This helps us decrease antibiotic resistance and heal our patients quickly. We can also culture yeast and fungus. Our bacterial culturing service is quite unique for general small animal practice in Canada.
