Diagnosing Your Pet

San Antonio Emergency Pet Clinic is fully equipped with state of the art equipment to aid in the rapid diagnosis of your pet’s illness, which allows our staff to more quickly assess and treat your pet. Rapid diagnosis and initiation of treatment, in turn, results in faster recovery and better outcomes. Our diagnostic services include:

Full In-House Laboratory Suite

Our laboratory suite is equipped to allow point-of-care testing including complete blood cell counts (CBC), blood chemistry analysis including liver and kidney function, blood glucose and proteins, electrolytes and blood gases, and urinalysis testing. Coagulation (clotting factor) testing is also an important element of diagnostics for critically ill patients such as in heat stroke, liver failure, and auto-immune diseases.

Reference Lab

For specialized tests which cannot be done in-clinic, San Antonio Emergency Pet Clinic partners with a reference veterinary lab to expand the scope of our diagnostic lab tests.

Microscopic Evaluation of Lumps, Bumps, Blood and Fluid from Body Cavities

Microscopy is an important diagnostic tool which can help differentiate infectious processes from cancers and auto-immune disease

Radiography

Radiographic imaging is critical in the diagnosis of internal illnesses involving cardiac, respiratory, gastrointestinal, hepatobiliary, splenic, reproductive and urinary disorders. In vehicular trauma patients, the majority have pneumothorax – which can be life-threatening if not diagnosed, monitored and treated. Radiography is also helpful in the assessment of bone and joint disorders and dental disease.

Ultrasonography

Ultrasonography uses varying frequency ultrasound waves to image soft tissue structures, such as abdominal organs and the heart. Our emergency veterinarians are trained in F.A.S.T. ultrasonography (Focused assessment with sonography in trauma), which allows rapid diagnosis of internal bleeding and injury for trauma patients. Ultrasonography is a complementary imaging modality to radiographs and allows imaging of the internal structures of organs and soft tissues, which are not able to be viewed with radiographs alone.

Electrocardiography (ECG)

Electrocardiography is the evaluation of the electrical activity of the heart, allowing assessment of the heart rhythm and rate. ECG testing is used to identify and monitor abnormal heart activity such as arrhythmias, which are commonly noted in critically ill and trauma patients, as well as patients with underlying heart disease.