Quality-of-Life andEnd-of-Life Assessments
It is important for owners and clinicians to understand that CP in dogs and cats is a lifelong, incurable disease, which never goes away and in fact is progressive. Clinical signs can usually be controlled but triggers for acute exacerbations should be avoided on a daily basis.
Owners therefore have to be very careful about diet changes or tit bits, avoiding high fat foods. Clinicians should be mindful of potential drug triggers and avoid these as much as possible. Owners should also learn to recognize when their animal is in pain and understand the potential for and clinical signs of functional impairment so that they can recognize these when they begin to develop and present their animal to a vet. Management of the diabetic pet with CP can be particularly challenging and owners are assisted in this by understanding the potential for acute flare-ups of disease.The owner and vet can work effectively together in the long-term management of the dog or cat with CP and these cases can be very rewarding. However, there are some cases where the animal's quality of life remains poor due to severe recurrent acute flare ups and ongoing pain for which control proves impossible and in these cases, it is important to discuss the option of euthanasia for the welfare of the animal. In the author's opinion, these cases are rare but do occur. Pain is intractable in some dogs in spite of attempts to control it.