Ancillary testing for the ruminant respiratory system

With greater use of a wide variety of diagnostic tools, such as transtracheal washing, respiratory endoscopy, chest radiography, thoracic ultrasonography, blood gas analysis, and lung biopsy, veterinarians are gaining tremendous insight into pathogenic mechanisms of the ruminant respiratory system. We have available many diagnostic aids; some fairly simple and inexpensive, others highly sophisticated and presently at far greater cost than justifiable on most individual food animals. Some methods recently developed, such as same-day viral particle detection in BAL samples,6 have tremendous potential for rapid and accurate diagnosis in ruminant pulmonary medicine. Undoubtedly, future research in this area will provide an ever widening array of powerful and rapid diagnostic aids to deal with respiratory disease of ruminants.