Pancreatitis http://www.highplainsvet.com/ask-the-vet/pancreatitis             ‘Tis the season to consider the pancreas, that small, often  overlooked abdominal organ that usually sits quietly alongside the intestines manufacturing digestive enzymes and sending them down a duct into the inside of the digestive tract where they dutifully do their job of breaking down food so it can be absorbed and used for nutrition.   When happy and functional this mild mannered organ is hardly noticed, but lurking inside it is the potential to turn into a terrible monster that can rain  destruction on all its surrounding neighbors.  The holiday season is particularly fraught with peril as the sorts of insults that can turn a good pancreas bad are present at every turn, and no self-respecting dog will pass up an opportunity to indulge in the things most likely to cause them problems.             When a pancreas gets angry the condition is called pancreatitis.  It continues to make digestive enzymes, but instead of sending them down the chute into the intestines where they belong it starts spewing them all over the inside of the abdomen where they dutifully try to digest the outsides of all the organs, a situation that is somewhat like having battery acid splashed on your liver, kidneys, and intestines.  As one could imagine that can cause a lot of pain, and affected dogs usually show signs of relentless vomiting and abdominal pain.  The degree of severity  falls along a range from mild and self limiting  to so severe that patients can go into multi-organ failure and die.              We do not always know what sets off a pancreas, but a high fat meal is by far the most common trigger in dogs. (In people it is binge drinking)  When the dog sneaks the holiday ham off the table and scarfs half of it before anyone sees you may find yourself dealing with the double whammy of no main dish for Christmas as well as a potentially severely ill dog.  I cringe when people tell me they pour bacon grease on their dog’s food to help the coat, or give a  generous serving of gravy to be nice at Thanksgiving.  My last patient to die from pancreatitis had eaten an entire package of uncooked breakfast sausage.  Mini Schnauzers are a breed that has a genetic tendency to not be able to process fatty meals well, so just whispering the word “cheeseburger” while in the same room with one may be enough to cause problems for that breed.             A diagnosis of pancreatitis is made on the basis of clinical signs, labwork, and sometimes ultrasound.  Unfortunately there is no medication that solves the problem.  Because anything that goes into the mouth triggers the pancreas to make more digestive enzymes, a dog must be completely fasted, kept hydrated with IV fluids, and given pain  control.  After providing supportive care we are left  to cross our fingers and hope the pancreas settles down before the damage is too severe to overcome.             Cats also develop pancreatitis, probably more often than we know, but in their typical cryptic way cats do not make the diagnosis easy.  There is no real correlation with fatty meals and pancreatitis in cats and they rarely show signs of vomiting or abdominal pain.  Their most common sign is just not eating, but even that is not very consistent.  Diagnosis can be made with some special blood tests, abdominal ultrasound, or most definitively with surgical biopsy of the pancreas.             Unlike dogs, the biggest factor in a cat’s recovery from pancreatitis is nutritional support, and that means that if the cat is not eating voluntarily a temporary feeding tube may need to be placed.  Cats that receive feeding tubes are much more likely to survive than cats that do not get tubes.  A feeding tube also has the benefit of allowing you to give the cat oral medication without a subsequent trip to the emergency room for yourself to stitch up your lacerated fingers and arms.