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CASE REPORT article

Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Medicine
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2024.1447629

Case Series: Use of pleural dialysis as an alternate means of renal replacement therapy in three cats

Provisionally accepted
Mara E. Vernier Mara E. Vernier 1Meghan E. Fick Meghan E. Fick 1*Tyler E. Johnson Tyler E. Johnson 2Yu Ueda Yu Ueda 2Alessio Vigani Alessio Vigani 3
  • 1 University of Georgia, Athens, United States
  • 2 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
  • 3 University Hospital Zürich, Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: The objective of this case series is to describe the indications, methodology, and shortterm outcomes of three cats with severe azotemia managed with pleural dialysis.Case summary: Three cats were presented separately to the emergency room (ER) on referral for severe azotemia of varying etiologies. Despite aggressive medical and/or surgical management, none of the cats showed improvement in their blood urea nitrogen (BUN) or creatinine values. Renal replacement therapy was recommended, but for varying reasons, the patients were unable to undergo a traditional extracorporeal method, such as intermittent hemodialysis (IDH). Instead, pleural dialysis was performed, and all three cats showed improvement in their renal values during and after their treatment. No significant complications were documented as a result of pleural dialysis. Two of the three cats were discharged from the hospital and the third cat was humanely euthanized due to poor prognosis.Pleural dialysis is a novel therapeutic procedure that is not documented in veterinary or human literature. This method of renal replacement therapy was well tolerated and had no reported complications. Careful case selection and risk-benefit analysis should be considered before attempting this procedure. Further studies are necessary to further define the utility of this therapeutic intervention, evaluate the incidence of complications, and determine long term outcomes following the procedure.

    Keywords: Dialysis1, pleural2, Kidney5, feline, Azotemia

    Received: 11 Jun 2024; Accepted: 30 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Vernier, Fick, Johnson, Ueda and Vigani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Meghan E. Fick, University of Georgia, Athens, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.