AVA Conference Adelaide 2016

Increasingly there are more medications used to treat animals with behavioural problems. Appropriate psychotropic medication combinations can lead to lower doses of individual medications, synergistic effects and better targeted treatments leading to better management of the behavioural condition. Inappropriate combination of medication, apart from not improving the animal’s behavioural problem, can also lead to serious side effects including gastrointestinal problems, serotonin syndrome, seizures, coma and even death. Additionally, some psychotropic medications are contraindicated with concurrent use of some common drugs used for parasite control and pain relief. It is essential that veterinarians consider all of the drugs the animal is taking concurrently