Outcome of 119 dogs and cats treated at the acupuncture unit of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science of the University of São Paulo State, Botucatu city, Brazil

Abstract

The veterinary acupuncture unit started in 2000 at Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science - University of São Paulo State, Brazil. During 2001 and 2002, 119 veterinary patients were treated including dogs (112) and cats (7), males (64) and females (55) with a mean age of 5.9 years. The treatments included the use of acupuncture, eletroacupuncture, moxibustion, gold implant, homeopathy, Chinese herbs and its associations. The majority of animals were crossbred dogs and small breed dogs such as teckels, pinschers and poodles. Cases were referred from colleagues of the Veterinary Hospital with several diseases such as neurological, musculoskeletal, skin, gastrointestinal, neoplasias, liver, kidney, lung, ear, eye, blood and reproduction diseases. All animals had a recovery rate of 63% after a mean of 7.6 weekly acupuncture sessions per animal, 10% died of unrelated diseases during treatment, 38% did not go on with the acupuncture sessions and 14% are still under treatment. The main diseases treated were neurological (63%) and musculoskeletal related problems (10%) or its associations (7%). For the neurological diseases, 65.8% of the animals treated got better after treatment, 15% are still being treated and 18% did not go on with the treatment. From the animals treated for musculoskeletal problems, 75% got better with the treatment, 8.3% are still under treatment. These data show that routinely the principal indications for acupuncture are neurological and/or musculoskeletal related diseases and that we obtained a mean of 79.6% of recovery in these neurological and/or musculoskeletal patients.