From:
Bruce Williams, DVM
Date: 2001-06-02 00:49:00 UTC
Subject: Re: Tennessee Panel problems
--- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., fhbythesea@a... wrote:
> For the collective docs on the list:
>
> I had written earlier about one of the shelter ferrets exhibiting
aggressive
> mating behavior and had taken him to the vet to have blood drawn
for a
> Tennessee Panel. I was told that it should take a week or so for
the results
> to come back.
>
> Now I know better. Apparently, the powers-that-be running this test
have
> decided that they only run it on the third monday of each month.
Dear Lisa - While I understand your frustration, this has always been
the case with the panel. Unforatunately, there is just not enough
demand for the test to be run on an as-needed basis. Every time the
test needs to be run, there is a minimum of three that need running -
the patient's serum, a positive control that is known to be elevated,
and a negative control, which should be zero. So for the lab, the
price of running one test is actually that of running three. If you
run ten or fifteen tests, it decreases the price quite a bit.
Running the test "on demand" would probably jack the price up
considerably.
Also remember, that the Univ. of Tenn. does the ferret community
quite a favor by running this unique test. No other labs perform it,
and most large labs that say they do simply send it down there.
Without UT, we would have a lot of ferrets with borderline cases that
might never get picked up.
On the other hand, if you have a ferret that exhibits classic
clinical signs ofadrenal disease, as several other listmembers have
already said - sometimes this money is best spent on surgery. Teh
behavior that this feret has shown (and you have illustrated so well
with your picture) would probably be enough to take to your vet for
surgery.
With kindest regards,
Bruce H. Williams, DVM, DACVP
Join the Ferret Health List at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret-Health-list
P.S. - Would you object (or your ferrets object) if we ran this image
on the fromt page for a little while - it's quite illustrative....