We all love the internet. It's amazing. I can send emails to friends overseas, video chat with my grandmother and buy everything I need for Christmas gifts without leaving the house. It's a great place to share news and information. As a veterinarian, I am able to stay up-to-date on current topics in medicine and communicate with specialists across the nation. I even REFER my own clients to the internet to look at sites with more information about surgeries or diseases their pets my have.
But overall, I think most vets HATE the internet. "Dr. Google" has become one of our enemies. About 50% of my clients that come in with a sick or injured pet believe they already know what the problem is and how I should treat it before they walk in the door. Quite often I'm told, I already looked it up and I'm pretty sure that he has "X disease" and I came to you for "Y medication". Sometimes they are right, and it makes the appointment go very smoothly and I run on time. But sometimes they are wrong, so wrong. The worst cases are when they have gone to a blog written by someone who does not provide any type of credentials and posts his or her random thoughts about veterinary medicine. Or when people misdiagnose their own pets and come to me when they aren't getting better.
Here are a few examples:
Yesterday I was talking to a client about her cat's hyperthyroid condition and explained to her that there is a new diet, Hill's Y/D, that has a very low iodine content to help suppress the amount of thyroid hormone the thyroid glad releases. This diet has been shown to be an effective treatment for hyperthyroidism in cats, where the gland produces excessive amounts of thyroid hormone, causing cats to become very skinny and sick despite having a ravenous appetite. She questioned me saying, "Are you sure? Because I read online that cats with hyperthyroidism need more iodine so I gave her one of my extra strength iodoine pills. She seems to get really sick after I give it to her though." What she was doing was making the disease worse by giving the cat these pills, but she had no idea.
A client noticed their cat wasn't urinating in the litter box and was acting strange for a few days. She looked it up online and she found something that explained the same signs and thought it sounded like the cat was stressed and probably urinating somewhere else in the house. She bought another litter box and put it in a different room, thinking the internet was being helpful. After 3 days of no urine in the litter box, the cat began to cry out when trying to urinate. The owner found him in the litter box meowing loudly. This got her attention and she brought him in. When he was examined, his bladder was larger than a softball and very hard. He was blocked and unable to urinate on his own. This is a life threatening condition because the electrolyte abnormalities that develop can cause his heart to stop or his bladder could tear from the pressure. Luckily, we were able to unblock him and save his life but this could have been diagnosed a few days later if she had brought him in instead of "Googling" his symptoms.
These aren't stupid people, just misinformed people. If you want to look something up online, talk to your vet about reliable internet sites. My favorites include:
www.petplace.com
http://www.veterinarypartner.com
http://www.avma.org/
