The Five Minute Consult Clinical Companion: Small Animal Toxicology

This book is a must-have for any practice, and would be a great study aid for veterinary and vet tech students, too.

The opening chapters cover emergency management, decontamination, detoxification, antidotes, and laboratory diagnostics and provide a good overview of veterinary emergency toxicology.

The extensive list of toxins covered, in an easy-to-find format, is clinically useful and informative without getting lost in the details. Each chapter has closing comments and suggested reading references for those who seek more detailed information about that specific toxin.

Small Animal Toxicology is the latest addition to the Blackwell’s Five-Minute Veterinary Consult Clinical Companion series. This edition covers over one hundred toxic metals, plants, venoms, biotoxins, rodenticides, foods and drugs. The "5-minute" format is an excellent quick reference for the clinic and a perfect study guide for veterinary and vet technician students, too.

The authors of this book, Ahna Brutlag DVM and Justine A. Lee DVM DACVEC, are staff veterinarians at Pet Poison Helpline and have contributed articles to this site on veterinary toxicology.

I have consulted this reference book when writing about toxicity of batteries, iron poisoning, and other veterinary toxicology subjects.

This handbook starts out with an overview of decontamination and detoxification and emergency management of the poisoned patient. These sections include thorough and step-by-step tips for decontaminating skin, eyes, and gastrointestinal systems. The gastrointestinal section contains information about various uses and contraindications for emetics, activated charcoal, cathartics. Gastric lavage and whole bowel irrigation techniques are also described.

An overview of antidotes gives the clinician a good reference of guide for the antivenoms, chelating agents, drugs, and other antidote agents used in veterinary medicine today.

The coverage of individual toxins, drugs and venoms is excellent, and the systematic coverage of each topic - definition/overview, etiology/pathophysiology, signalment/history, clinical features, differential diagnoses, diagnostics, therapeutics, and followup comments - make finding the exact information you need quick and easy.

An electronic copy of this text was provided by the authors for my review of this book.