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| Dr Janet Van Dyke hiking in the Colorado Rockies. |
Do you recommend rehabilitation or physiotherapy
for your canine patients? SAT recently had the opportunity to quiz Dr Janet Van
Dyke, a veterinarian with unique experiences in veterinary orthopaedics, sports
medicine, physiotherapy and rehab.
What
is your day job?
I am the CEO of Canine Rehabilitation Institute,Inc., a company that I founded in 2002. We teach our courses around the globe
though we are based in the U.S. I am involved in coordinating all international
courses as well as our growing online library of continuing education
programming.
How
did you become interested in canine rehabilitation and sports medicine?
I had a surgical practice for 20+ years and had the
opportunity to work with clients who were physios. They taught me what they
would do for children recovering from similar surgeries to those I was
performing on their pets. I was also privileged to work with many clients
who competed with their dogs in canine sports and with clients who had working
dogs (military, police, service dogs, etc.). These relationships lead me to
pursue additional training in sports medicine and rehabilitation for people. I
started to incorporate more and more of these skills into my daily practice,
encouraging my residents and students to do the same.
Is
canine rehabilitation and sports medicine just for athletic dogs?
Theoretically, sports medicine would apply
primarily to ‘athletic dogs’, but when you think about it, a Chihuahua who
can get on the bed in a single leap is an amazing athlete, no? So all dogs can
benefit from the application of techniques used in sports medicine and
rehabilitation practice. We can rehabilitate aged dogs recovering from serious
surgery, and we can rehabilitate elite athletes who require skilled manual
therapies to return them to peak performance. Old dogs, fat dogs, immature
(clumsy) puppies, injured pet dogs, covertly lame working dogs - all can
benefit from these techniques.
Rehab
and sports medicine are established fields when it comes to humans, why have we
been slow on the uptake in the veterinary world?
It started with equine rehabilitation/sports
medicine in the 60’s when horses transitioned from beasts of burden to
multi-million dollar sport horses. Canine rehabilitation did not take off
until the late 90’s. So many of us were trained in veterinary school that dogs
don’t need this extra care…they have 4 legs, so if one is not working, they
have 3 more to protect that one…and that dogs are ‘too stupid’ to be given
pain medications post operatively, as they would then play too hard and damage
the surgical ‘repair’. We now recognize the fallacy of these statements,
but it takes a long, long time to train an entire field of medicine to think a
new way. We’re getting there…one responsible and caring veterinarian at a time!
What
sort of conditions benefit from treatment with rehabilitation?
The most commonly treated conditions would be
orthopedic (anterior cruciate ligament injuries, patella lunation, hip and
elbow dysplasia, etc.) and neurologic (intervertebral disc disease,
degenerative myelopathy, neuronal injury), however we see many dogs for
weight loss, many elderly patients to improve upon their activities of daily
living, and many working and athletic dogs who have such mild (covert) lameness
that no one can ‘see’ it, but their handlers notice a change in their
abilities to perform.
In
your view, what can veterinarians do to improve outcomes in patients presenting
with lameness?
The absolute key to improving outcomes is to be
better at diagnostics. This is where physiotherapy makes all the difference in
human as well as veterinary patients. So many of the impairments that
our patients face are actually soft tissue (muscle, tendon, ligament,
joint capsule, fascia) rather than bone and joint. These patients are lame
but radiographically ‘normal’.
By applying better palpation skills along with
special tests used in physiotherapy diagnostics, we can vastly improve upon the
diagnoses, allowing us to tease out the specific soft tissues that are
impaired, and to treat these issues specifically rather than resorting to rest
and NSAID’s as is so often done. Even those patients with an obvious
bone/joint issue (post op ACL for example) have soft tissue issues that
left untreated prevent them from having a rapid and full recovery.
Are
there any helpful resources you could share with veterinarians?
I highly recommend the textbook, Canine SportsMedicine and Rehabilitation, Zink and Van Dyke, ed’s, Wiley Publishing for
anyone wishing to know more about this field. We invite all interested
veterinary and physiotherapy professionals to attend our certification programs
where they can learn the art, science and the business of canine sports
medicine and rehabilitation.
Any advice for vets and budding vets?
Visit our website at www.caninerehabinstitute.com for more information! I would also recommend
joining the American Association of Rehabilitation Veterinarians. Despite the
name, it is open to vets and veterinary students globally. A great
resource: www.rehabvets.org
Thank you Dr Van Dyke. Dr Van Dyke, alongside
colleagues Dr Laurie Mccauley and Judy Coates, will be leading VetPrac’s
Introduction to Canine Rehabilitation Workshop from October 14-18. For more
information click here.
