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Drs. Jen & Paul discussing a client's radiograph.
Palm Bay Animal Clinic is pleased to offer our clients and their pets on-site radiology with our new radiograph unit! Our doctors are trained to perform and evaluate radiographs, saving time in diagnosing and treating your pet. When needed, we can send our radiographs to a radiologist for review or refer our patients to the veterinary specialists for further studies.
Radiographs are an important, non-invasive method of diagnosing common signs of disease, such as broken bones, enlarged organs, bladder stones, or foreign objects in the intestinal tract. A radiograph machine allows veterinarians to create a 2 dimensional image of the internal body structures through electromagnetic radiation.
Barium Series Radiographs can easily locate foreign objects
When looking at a radiograph (or x-ray), the bones appear white, air is black, and the internal organs and fluid are a shades of gray. A special series of radiographs, called a barium series, can be very helpful in determining if a pet has eaten a foreign object and it has become lodged in the stomach or intestines. To perform this series, the pet is first given oral liquid barium, which appears as a white fluid on the radiographs. The radiographs are taken at different time points to follow the fluid through the intestinal tract. If the fluid stops at a certain point before reaching the end, it is likely that the pet has become obstructed.
