Pet Diagnostics in State College PA

Our doctors are skilled at using x-ray and ultrasound imaging technology as well as laboratory testing methods to give you diagnosis and treatment plans when your pet is not well. X-rays are particularly useful when a pet becomes ill or has suffered certain types of trauma.

Ultrasound images can help to see internal organs, cysts and tumors more clearly. Ultrasounds also are useful for determining pregnancy (and counting the number of babies inside that belly!).

We also offer a number of different diagnostic panels which are recommended by our doctors as needed.

Senior blood work can help us to have a normal baseline for your animal as he/she ages. It can help us to find disease early, before symptoms occur, such as kidney disease, liver problems or urinary tract infections. Catching and treating at an early stage is when we are more likely to have effective treatment.

This senior blood work is required before any dental or anesthetic procedures in our older patients. If your senior dog is lucky enough to be healthy and does not require a dental cleaning or any kind of mass removal, it is still very useful to have bloodwork to check for subclinical (very early stage) disease and look at trends in kidney and liver function as your dog ages. The earlier we can catch old-age diseases, the longer we hope your pet will live.

Testing urine and feces is another important method used to diagnose illness in your pets. We recommend that stool samples be tested each year at your pet’s annual wellness appointment, but we often ask concerned pet parents to drop off urine or stool samples so that we can check for parasites, bacterial infections and other indications of changes in health.

We recommend that all dogs and cats are screened annually for intestinal parasites with a fecal sample. We need a sample that is larger than the size of a grape.

If your pet has intermittent loose stools or softer stools, please bring us a sample that represents that softer stool. If collecting a sample from a cat, make sure that the sample contains fecal material not just a clump of urine. We send routine samples to an outside lab and typically have results in one to two working days.