Infectious Disease

Infectious disease is the area of practice where guidance changes fastest and where a clinic's protocols affect more than one patient at a time. A vaccination recommendation shifts, a respiratory outbreak moves through boarding facilities, a diagnostic test is replaced by a better one, and the whole team has to adjust what it says on the phone, how it rooms a patient, and what it stocks.

This hub collects our reference guides on the infections a small animal practice is most likely to prevent, diagnose, or isolate, together with our running coverage of outbreaks, approvals, and new studies. The consensus statements and guidelines that govern the field include the ACVIM consensus statement on leptospirosis in dogs, the AAHA and WSAVA vaccination guidelines, the AAFP feline retrovirus testing and management guidelines, and the antimicrobial use guidelines published by the International Society for Companion Animal Infectious Diseases. Each guide lists the exact sources it was drafted from. Merck Veterinary Manual chapters and peer-reviewed reviews fill in pathogenesis and clinical presentation.

Several recent shifts are covered in detail. The updated leptospirosis consensus statement changed how that vaccine is positioned for dogs, and the guide quotes the panel's wording on which dogs should receive it. Parvovirus care now includes published outpatient protocols for clients who cannot afford hospitalization, and the guide reports what its sources say about outcomes along with the limits of that evidence. Feline retrovirus guidance separates screening from confirmation and describes how the meaning of a positive result depends on the test and the cat. The respiratory disease guide treats the cough as a syndrome with many possible agents, as the literature does, and sets out when the antimicrobial guidelines support treatment and when they advise against it.

Two operational themes recur. One is biosecurity: isolation, disinfection, and traffic flow for a patient that may be shedding a contagious agent, and for leptospirosis the zoonotic precautions the consensus statement lists for staff. The other is stewardship. The antimicrobial guidelines are specific about first-line choices and durations, and the guides quote those recommendations with attribution, since rewording a guideline is an easy way to change what it means. Prevalence varies by region, and local data from a diagnostic laboratory or a state veterinarian will often be more useful than a national figure.