Retrospective study of diseases and associated pneumonia type diagnosed in dogs at post-mortem at Veterinary Teaching Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract

The causes and types of pneumonia in dogs have not been accorded due attention in Nigeria. It is imperative to investigate the incidence and type of pneumonia commonly observed during post-mortem at the Department of Veterinary Pathology arm of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria. This investigation was carried out on 397 archival canine samples for dogs presented for necropsy at the Department of Veterinary Pathology, University of Ibadan, during the periods of 2000 - 2012. The gross diagnosis was obtained from the postmortem records while the specific type of pneumonia was by histopathology of selected lungs tissues, using standard techniques. Descriptive statistics was employed to evaluate the effect of age, sex, breed and the type of pneumonia. Alsatian(29%) and Rottweiler(14.4%) breeds of dogs were the common breeds of dogs encountered at post-mortem, and the dogs above 3 year old (51.9%) were the most affected, with leptospirosis (38.5%) being the most prevalent disease diagnosed, followed by neoplasia (13.49%) while infectious canine hepatitis was the least prevalent (0.5%). The histopathological diagnosis revealed that the pneumonic patterns were that of suppurative bronchopneumonia (75%), fibrinous bronchopneumonia (10%) and interstitial pneumonia, (15%). The diseases associated with the different pneumonia seen during the histopathological examination were leptospirosis, canine distemper, and left sided heart failure. Findings has shown that pneumonia in dogs were commonly associated with leptospirosis. In the course of this study, the histopathological lesions and changes associated with the pneumonia seen in the leptospirosis cases include alveolar haemorrhages, edema, neutrophils and macrophages in the alveolar spaces and neutrophils in small pulmonary vessels. In lieu of this, pneumonia could be a major contributory factor to death associated with leptospirosis in the cases reviewed.

Keywords: Archival necropcy samples, Dogs, Incidence, Leptospirosis, Pneumonia