Centreville Animal Hospital Newsletter
www.centrevilleanimalhosp.com

Vol. 7 Number 10

News and Views as Fall Starts Dry and Pleasant

The national news media has introduced pet owners to the following subjects in the past few weeks. I thought I present some information and thoughts on microchips, bloat in large breed dogs, and stem cell injections for arthritis.

Microchips IDs safe, but not foolproof

Dr. Wes Borgman Special to the Sentinel September 16, 2007

Microchips provide the most reliable and most secure method of identifying your pet. But with the never-ending controversy about different types of microchips, can you really rely on this "high-tech" ID tag? News reports link microchips with cancer in laboratory rodents.

Essentially, microchips are computer chips about the size of a grain of rice. Easily implanted under your pet's skin by a hypodermic needle, microchips provide permanent identification that won't wear out, fade or get lost if the pet runs away. A found dog can be taken to a shelter or other location with a scanner, which can find the microchip and translate its ID code.

These individual numbers can then be found on a database and the owners contacted.

Linda Lord, doctor of veterinary medicine and assistant professor at Ohio State University, said, "There is no evidence to suggest that companion animals implanted with a microchip are at a higher risk for developing a tumor. The mice . . . were genetically predisposed to cancer and do not represent the genetic diversity we see in our dogs and cats."

Lord went on to explain that in the United Kingdom, where more than half of the dog population has a microchip, the British Small Animal Veterinary Association has established a formal system for the reporting of adverse events related to microchips, including tumors.

"In 10 years of collecting data, only two tumors were reported to their adverse-event registry," Lord said.

Candy and Tony Abercrombie's dogs Romie and Max had a microchip implanted so that they could be easily identified if they were ever lost or stolen. But how did a safe, secure and "foolproof" pet ID fail these pet owners?

The issue that nearly cost Romie her life was that there are multiple chips being marketed today with at least four types of frequencies. During the past17 years, the predominant frequency in the United States has been the 125 kHz frequency.

Romie had a different chip, one that emits a frequency of 134.2 kHz, otherwise known as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO)chip. The local animal shelter was using a scanner designed for 125 kHz chips and missed Romie's chip.

Luckily, a shelter employee recognized Romie and was able to contact Candy promptly. However, according to veterinarian Dan Knox of the AVID Co., a U.S.microchip pioneer, these multiple frequencies will continue to put pets atrisk by confusing the system.

"There are more than 100,000 scanners capable of identifying chips at 125kHz in shelters currently. Adding new frequencies will only cause more work for understaffed shelters and will potentially be dangerous to pets," he said.

Knox's concern was validated in 2004 when a dog with the ISO standard chip was euthanized after a Virginia shelter failed to find a microchip.

With the exception of the United States, the world has been using the ISO chip for identification.

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