Exams
Your pet can’t talk, so we have to look! Why? Because we believe strongly in prevention being better than cure.
We humans can moan and groan and point and complain at the earliest sign of a medical problem. Not so with animals. If we don’t look our pets over regularly, we may miss these subtle early signs of disease and rob ourselves of the chance of early intervention.
All too often disease is well advanced before we even notice. This is especially true in the case of birds, ferrets, reptiles, and other non-traditional pets. Remember! Your pet’s life span is much shorter compared to your own. A lot can happen in 12 months.
At the Chastain Veterinary Medical Group we strongly advise a complete physical examination by a qualified veterinarian at least once a year for the young and fit, and maybe twice a year for our less fit and older pets.
Your Chastain Veterinary Medical Group veterinarian has trained and worked for years to be able to thoroughly examine your pet in only 5 to 10 minutes. Physicals don’t take long, yet they are one of the most valuable and informative tests that can be done for your pet. Physical exam findings can lead to early detection of disease and prevention of many diseases, and, as a healthcare strategy, prevention is generally much more effective and less expensive in the long run than treating problems as they flare up.
At Chastain Veterinary Medical Group, veterinary physical examinations are complete, and cover all 12 of the major body systems.
Vaccinations
Preventive health care is one of our strongest weapons in the fight against disease and we achieve this, in part, through routine vaccination and regular physical examinations.
Vaccinations provide immunity from certain diseases. This is done by introducing a vaccine into the body, either orally, nasally, or by injection. The vaccine activates and stimulates the body’s immune system, causing it to be especially vigilant against future attack by the indicated infectious disease.
At the Chastain Veterinary Medical Group hospitals, we have devised a rotating 3-year vaccination schedule. This is based on contemporary scientific understanding, which indicates that dogs and cats probably don’t need to be vaccinated against every single disease, every 6 to 12 months, as we did in the past.
Our vaccination schedule may be a little different from that in use elsewhere, but is in accordance with vaccination protocol in use at some of the most prestigious veterinary teaching hospitals in the country. And we’re proud to say we’ve never had a vaccine break with our rotating 3-year vaccination schedule.
Where cats are concerned, our rotating 3-year vaccination schedule also follows the recommendations of the American Association of Feline Practitioners.
Another advantage of 3-year vaccinations compared to the old fashioned annual method is cost saving. However, we won’t compromise on quality. At the Chastain Veterinary Medical Group hospitals we only use the very best quality vaccines available. For cats for example, we use only non-adjuvenated vaccines whenever possible to lessen the threat of vaccine associated cancers. Yes! They do cost a little more but we have never felt that doing things cheap was as important as doing things right.
Life-Cycle Wellness
Our Life-Cycle Wellness Program is an approach to preventive care and long-term pet health care that we have developed over time with benefit of our many years of experience in pet health care.
Regular physical examinations, key preventive health care screening tests and long term protection with the safest and most modern canine and feline vaccines give us the ideal base for optimum pet health care.
We constantly monitor infectious diseases and illnesses in our areas and adjust our Wellness System and services to protect our animals accordingly. Our computerized confirmation and reminder system allows us to notify you when your pet is due for immunization, tests, and treatments or if we need to inform you of any items of interest or concern.
We have developed Life-Cycle Wellness Programs for all the major species that we regularly see – dogs, cats, ferrets, companion birds, reptiles, and rabbits. For more information just give us a call!
Healthier pets and overall cost savings are long term benefits of our system.
Special Interests
Dentistry – We do a lot of routine dental cleaning, but also much more involved dentistry including surgical extraction, using high speed drill, bone grafting materials, etc. We are not set up for endodontics – but we can treat pretty much everything else- and we have digital dental radiography in each clinic.
Diagnostics – We emphasize wellness and trying to catch problems early- often prior to owners recognizing signs so we can intervene and make a big difference in quality and longevity of life. We are emphatic about trying to diagnose before treating- therefore we do a lot of diagnostic tests, for example: radiographs, blood tests, urinalysis, ultrasound, Cardiac BNP, etc.
Medical Imaging – Sometimes the fastest way to get to the root of a problem is to just go look. Happily we can now do that non-invasively by means of X-rays and ultrasound exams. All of our doctors are skilled at performing and interpreting x-ray and ultrasound exams
