Adequate food intake and nutrition is essential in the maintenance of health and in healing. A loss of appetite commonly accompanies illness however it can also be precipitated by physical or emotional trauma, stress, fear, or pain.
Identifying and addressing the underlying cause for inappetence is critical in getting the animal to eat again. Interventions including the warming of food or offering highly palatable foods are often undertaken as part of the nursing care of these patients, and appetite stimulants are often incorporated into the treatment plan. Drugs including benzodiazepines and cyproheptadine are commonly prescribed, however their efficacy in stimulating appetite is variable.
In this Specialty Update we discuss management of inappetence in dogs. The focus is on a newer pharmacologic option - capromorelin - including how this drug works and the findings reported of a clinical study of dogs treated with this drug.
Running time: 20 mins
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