What diet should I choose for optimal patient management: a functional or veterinary diet?

Abstract

Optimal patient care often involves a multimodal approach, combining medical, surgical, and nutritional management: e.g., canine atopic dermatitis, feline chronic kidney disease (renal insufficiency), osteoarthritis, chronic enteropathies, diabetes mellitus, cardiac insufficiency. For some conditions, nutrition may be the mainstay of management: e.g., overweight/obesity, urolithiaisis, food responsive enteropathy, adverse food reactions. As part of their treatment strategies, veterinarians can choose from a wide range of nutritional products, from over-the-counter and functional feeds, freely available in shops and pet stores, or veterinary dietetic (prescription) feeds, dispensed by veterinarians. But which one is the best choice? Is it a simple case of always immediately choosing the veterinary diet? Or can we choose an alternative? The choice of which is the best nutritional option depends on: (1) clinical examination and staging / severity of underlying pathology, matched to the ideal nutritional support, which has been based on the highest-ranking evidence based veterinary medicine. (2) client`s wishes, e.g., do they actually want to feed a veterinary dietetic feed? (3) acceptability of the diet. (4) cost of feeding, based on short or longterm / lifelong requirements. Therefore, the best choice may not initially be immediately obvious.

Optimalna nega pacijenta često predstavlja multimodalni pristup koji kombinuje medicinski, hirurški i dijetarni pristup: na primer atopični dermatitis pasa, renalna insuficijencija mačaka, osteoartritis, hronične enteropatije, dijabetes melitus, srčana insuficijencija. Za neka stanja, ishrana može biti okosnica u lečenju: na primer prekomerna težina/gojaznost, urolitijaza, enteropatija koja reaguje na hranu, neželjene reakcije na hranu. Kao deo strategije lečenja, veterinari mogu da biraju između širokog spektra nutritivnih proizvoda, od hrane bez recepta i funkcionalne hrane, koje su dostupne u marketima i prodavnicama za kućne ljubimce, do veterinarske dijetetske hrane (na recept) koju izdaju veterinari. Ali koji je najbolji izbor? Da li je to jednostavano pitanje da se uvek odabere veterinarska dijeta? Ili možemo izabrati alternativu? Izbor najbolje opcije ishrane zavisi od: (1) kliničkog pregleda i stadijuma / težine oboljenja, (2) želje klijenta, na primer, da li zaista žele da koriste veterinarsku dijetetsku hranu? (3) prihvatljivosti dijete, (4) troškova ishrane, koji su zasnovani na kratkoročnim ili dugoročnim životnim potrebama. Stoga, najbolji izbor možda u početku neće biti odmah očigledan.