The focus of this session is on maximizing the quality of life of dogs with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end stage CKD considerations. 

CKD is an irreversible and generally progressive condition even with an optimized treatment approach and can end up significantly impacting our patients’ quality of life. In this session we discuss options for minimizing the clinical signs of CKD and how to balance symptomatic and supportive care (with the treatment options discussed previously) in a practical manner. Ultimately, even with all of our available treatment options, patients with CKD can have significant enough effects that we have to have difficult end-of-life conversations. In this segment we will dig into some of the issues related to those conversations.

Discussion includes:

• Symptomatic and supportive care measures for dogs with CKD
• The use of supplements
• Identifying end-stage disease
• Quality of life and end-of-life considerations
  
  

Running time: 1 hr 24 min
Approved for 1.25 hours of CE credit by AAVSB RACE and NY State