Question :

I have a Lhasa Apso female dog who is 5 years old. A week before she developed kidney problems as diagonised by the vet. Her urea in blood came as 334 and creatinine as 5.1. She was immediately put on IV fluids.A week later her blood test was done again and her urea count came down to 134 and creatinine to 2.5.She is still undergoing IV fluids treatment. Please suggest what kind if diet should i give her and what other treatments are possible?

Answer :

Hello,

I would like to start with a few general comments about your post:
- kidney failure is quite unusual for a 5 years dog
- a blood test is not enough to make a diagnosis of kidney failure
- I think your figures might be urea=5 and 2.5 and creatinine=334 and 134 and not the other way round. If your vet uses a different reference range from mine, then I will not be able to comment. If however, it is as above, then the result does not sounds too bad to me … and would not provide any evidence of kidney failure.

Therefore, I would like to keep an open mind about this. If your dog was my patient, I would like to test her urine and check the specific gravity to confirm the presumptive diagnosis.

If despite my concerns, your dog is confirmed to suffer from kidney disease, then it is very important to make sure that the kidney problem is not secondary to another disease. In such a young dog, poisoning would be a possibility. Products such as anti-freeze may trigger kidney failure in very young dog. Also I note that your dog is female. Has she been neutered? If not, be aware that a pyometra (infection of the uterus) can cause kidney disease as well.

Finally, to answer your question about the food, kidney sparing diets exist and are sold by specialist companies:
http://www.vetstoria.co.uk/templates/hill_s_k_d-6-814-familypet.html

If you prefer feeding your pet a home-cooked diet, I recommend low but high quality amount of protein: small amount of white meat such as chicken or boiled egg white with boiled rice. avoid salt. you may had products which bind potassium such as:
http://www.vetstoria.co.uk/templates/ipakitin-6-977-familypet.html

I hope this helps and that your doggy is on her way to a full recovery.

Best of luck, Julien
http://www.vetstoria.co.uk