Feline dermatology cases at Cornell University

July 22, 2013

Scott DW, Miller WH and Erb HN. Feline dermatology at Cornell University: 1407 cases (1988–2003). J Feline Med Surg. 2013; 15: 307-16.

In this publication, the authors examined medical records of 1407 cats with dermatologic diagnoses made at the veterinary teaching hospital at Cornell University. The diagnoses were reported in one form as percentages of cats with dermatologic disease out of the percentages of all cats seen at the hospital (22,135) during that period. This study was made up of predominantly first opinion cases (53.4%). A percentage of 26.4% of the cats had two or more concurrent dermatologic diagnoses. The most common group of diseases (32.7%) was allergic in origin (allergy, atopic dermatitis, flea-bite allergy, food allergy and mosquito-bite allergy). This was a different result from previous reports.
 
The second most common diagnoses were bacterial infections (bacterial folliculitis/furunculosis) with 15.4% of cases. Parasitic disorders, otodectic mange the most common of this group, were the third most common diagnoses in the study with 14%. The next group involved diseases of the external ear (9.8%) followed by fungal diseases (5.9%) and then immune-mediated (5.5%). Psychogenic alopecia was recognized in only three cases supporting the conclusion that psychogenic alopecia is a rare cause of behavior that appears allergy-related in cats. This report also recognized for the first time a significantly increased risk for Himalayans and males and a significantly decreased risk for cats less than than 2 years old and females. [VT]

See also: Bryan J and Frank LA. Food allergy in the cat: A diagnosis by elimination. J Feline Med Surg. 2010; 12: 861-6.