Wildlife Rehabilitation News

2008 Training Opportunities

Avian Diseases & Conservation Conference
May 29-31
College of Veterinary Medicine-Western University, Pomona, California

The aim of this conference is to provide in-depth information on selected avian diseases and hands-on training to veterinarians, ornithologists, conservationists, zookeepers, rehabilitators, aviculturists, wildlife managers and park rangers that have a special interest in avian conservation and diseases. The main goal of this conference is to provide updated information on infectious, toxicological and nutritional diseases in free-ranging and captive at zoos birds as it relates to their conservation and provide networking opportunities for avian health professionals. Topics that will be presented include avian diseases and conservation; the impact of diseases in avian populations; updates on avian influenza, West Nile, and avian tuberculosis; the role of birds as biosentinels; avian zoonoses, including psittacosis; molecular diagnosis of avian diseases; lead poisoning impacts on birds; and nutritional and genetic disorders in California Condor. The conference includes intensive didactic lectures along with interactive avian necropsy/ sample collection hands-on laboratory sessions. In addition, an oiled sea-bird rehabilitation laboratory will be offered. A certificate of completion and CE credits will be awarded to participants successfully completing this 3-day conference.

For more information visit the web site at: http://www.westernu.edu/xp/edu/veterinary/avian_objective.xml

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Fluid Therapy - Pain Management - Basic Hematology - Capture & Restraint
April 12, 2008
Blue Mountain Wildlife, Pendleton, Oregon

For more information call 541-278-0215 or email: lynn@bluemountainwildlife.org

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2008 WWRA Board of Directors Election Results

A warm welcome to our new board member Kol Medina. Kol has also been elected as Vice President. Kol is Executive Director at West Sound Wildlife Shelter, an attorney, and life-long environmental enthusiast. Kol continues his law practice and has served on numerous Boards including the Association of Bainbridge Communities, the West Sound Wildlife Shelter, One Call for All, and the National Association of Environmental Law Societies. From 1996-1998, Kol and his wife served as Peace Corps Volunteers in West Africa, managing a forest valuation project, a livestock vaccination project, and designing an educational children's bird book. Kol obtained his B.A. in Environmental Studies at Carleton College and his law degree at Stanford Law School. Kol and his wife, Elsa, currently reside on Bainbridge Island.

SPECIAL THANKS to Serena Lockwood for serving as Board President for the past three years, for doing so much work for WWRA and for doing a great job for us all!! Jennifer Convy has been elected as the new President.

Also, a SPECIAL THANKS to Alicia Hartley for her dedicated and hard work serving on the board as both secretary and treasurer.

Other election news: Jenny Schlieps was elected Secretary and Mike Pratt will remain Treasurer. Serena will remain on the board and serve on various committees.

The WWRA is looking for good people like yourself to serve on the Board of Directors. Please consider joining the team for 2009. Contact Jennifer Convy for more details


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Throw Away Your Dexamethasone! Proper Treatment for Wildlife with Head Injuries

Mark A. Pokras, DVM and Maureen Murray, DVM
Wildlife Clinic - Tufts University - School of Veterinary Medicine

Let us (for a moment) be controversial, pedantic, and absolutist. There is NO reason for 99.99% of wildlife rehabilitators to have the steroid drug, dexamethasone, on their shelves - NOT EVER!!

Don't get us wrong, dex. can be a superb drug. It is essential for MDs and veterinarians doing dexamethasone suppression tests for endocrine disease, certain cancer treatments, as a systemic anti-inflammatory, for thrombocytopenia, and several other purposes.

But the vast majority of rehabilitators don't encounter these issues. But dexamethasone is a drug that is probably USELESS and may in fact be HARMFUL, for the situation in which most rehabilitators want to use it for the treatment of head injuries.

Let's look at the literature in people medicine. In 1995 the Brain Trauma Foundation summarized the findings of 8 major studies in the previous 20 years. Basically they found that patients did about as well over time when NO steroids were used as when steroid were used. More recently, the 2001 CRASH study summarized even more literature and concluded that there is no statistical benefit to steroid use in head injuries. But because the topic is so controversial, they have undertaken a long-term, prospective study that will study the outcome of steroid use vs. steroid non-use in over 20,000 human cases in more than 60 European hospitals over the next few years.

In the course of this, and other, literature reviews, many authors have also noticed that people and animals receiving steroids for head injuries may have some negative outcomes. Chief of these are increased risks of infection and GI bleeding.

Steroids are powerful drugs that have effects on many of the body? systems. Like many powerful drugs, they should be used with care. Undesirable effects of steroids can include:

a) immunosuppression
b) increased risk of infection when steroid use is continued
c) gastro-intestinal bleeding
d) increases in blood glucose
e) in pregnancy, may affect fetal adrenocortical development

Of course part of the problem is that we are probably oversimplifying things, all head injuries are NOT created equal. Nearly 100 years of studies on the use of steroids for head injury have shown no clear medical benefits and several distinct risks. We suspect that after the CRASH study is done, we will find out that there may be certain head injuries in which steroids can have some benefit. But, it will probably require that doctors have information from hospital tests like ICP, MRI, CT scan, etc to determine intracranial pressure, location of bleeding, extent of damage to the tissues of the brain, etc. Maybe steroids help with certain patterns of injuries and make others worse - we just can't know yet. And when will we have these sorts of data on our wildlife patients?

Are there situations in which rehabilitators should consider using steroids? Yes for acute spinal cord trauma. And for that, there is one form of steroid that HAS been shown to have significant beneficial effects, and that drug is methylprednisolone. But for this drug to have its benefits, it must be used very rapidly after the original injury. Zero to four hours is probably the only time this steroid will have any benefit. Eight or 10 or 24 hours after the injury is just too late for even this steroid to do any good. The nice thing about methylprednisolone is that it is rapidly metabolized away. If it is used just for short period, it does not stick around long enough to cause immunosuppression or GI problems (unlike dexamethasone which has a much longer half-life and is thus more likely to cause problems).

So, what should we do for head injuries? We want to help our head injury patients, but we also want to abide by the important medical dictum first, do no harm? Let us suggest three things:

1. stop using steroids they probably do no good and may do harm,
2. DO make sure that you are doing everything else you can to support the animal including making sure the animal can breathe, providing extra oxygen, starting fluid therapy to keep blood volume up, reducing stress, and keep the patient? head elevated.
3. Unless the animal is severely hypothermic, do not warm it up (no incubator or heating pads), cooler than normal body temperatures may in fact be helpful.

There are more aggressive therapies for head injuries in both human and veterinary medicine. These include IV fluids, hypothermia, mannitol diuretics, drugs to control seizures, etc., but these are specialized techniques that should only be done under veterinary supervision. Newer modalities including the uses of progesterone, antioxidants and neuroprotective agents like vitamin E, melatonin, magnesium chloride, and many others are all being actively studied.

Remember, not all veterinarians or MDs agree with what we are saying. But take the time to do some reading yourself in either the medical or veterinary literature and I think you would be convinced. So help your patients, and save money at the same time throw out your dex!!

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West Nile Virus News:
Since West Nile Virus was first detected in 1999, WNV has been detected in wildlife, primarily birds, in 45 states and the District of Columbia.


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Avian Influenza News
H5N1 in Wild Birds in the United States of America: The Department of Interior was quoted by the Reuters news agency this week saying that it will test 27,000 wild bird samples in 2007. In the same report, the Department of Agriculture stated that it will test fewer birds than it did in 2006, about 77,000 samples.

News Update April 2007. In a paper in the May issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, an international team of researchers report the first ever large-scale sequencing of western genomes of the deadly avian influenza virus, H5N1. Click Here for the entire article.

News Update April 2007 - Two research papers published in the journal 'Ibis' have concluded that there is no evidence to link the recent spread of the pathogenic avian influenza to migratory birds. The paper concludes that commercial activities, particularly those associated with poultry, are the major factors that have determined the global spread of the deadly virus. Click here for the entire article.