January 24, 2008

Purdue's Small Animal Teaching Hospital gains cat specialist

Annette Litster and friend
Download photo

Annette Litster, assistant professor in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine, offers her cat specialty services in the Veterinary Teaching Hospital on Wednesdays and Thursdays. She conducts follow-up care, studies medical problems of her clients and plans future research projects the rest of the week.

Litster worked in private practice after earning her doctorate in veterinary medicine in her native Australia from the University of Queensland in 1982. She decided to meld her veterinary work with university research after a 1998 sabbatical in Philadelphia, and earned her feline medicine fellowship by examination in 2001. She earned another doctorate with a focus on feline heartworm disease from the University of Queensland in 2004, as well as a master of medical science in clinical epidemiology from the University of Newcastle in 2006.

"As in human health care, pet owners seem to want more specialty medical expertise," Litster said. "I've been concentrating on cats since 1989. The fellowship that I earned in Australia is akin to the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine certification process here. It was quite rigorous and required four years of supervised training followed by examinations by an international panel. The result is that I specialize in an area that I love. I'm a cat person."

The specialty feline group at Purdue concentrates on cats with complex medical issues and treats cats with a wide variety of problems. Practicing veterinarians refer the cats to the Small Animal Hospital so that students and interns can work alongside faculty to diagnose, treat, care for and learn from their patients.

"Students learn to become more familiar with normal cat problems in a clinic so they can build up a mental databank of things that look minor but may be red flags," Litster said. "We work closely with the owner and the referring veterinarian, who have expressed their confidence in Purdue by coming back time and again."

Purdue's relationship with other veterinarians is important because it provides them with access to Purdue, and it allows Purdue to serve both the needs of the veteriarian and the needs of the community, said Mimi Arighi, director of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

"Having someone who has dedicated her advanced training to cats exclusively has obvious benefits for pet owners as well as for our students, but it also allows us to further develop existing relationships with practitioners throughout the state," Arighi said. "We benefit from our collaborations with veterinarians in the state and hope that the addition of Dr. Litster will, in turn, benefit them."

Litster, who also is an epidemiologist and has conducted research on human drugs and medicine, hopes to be able to work on a more evidence-based approach to veterinary medicine, using data gained from sound research design and critical clinical analysis to produce reliable evidence on which to base clinical decisions.

"It's no longer good enough to conduct ourselves one particular way simply because we did it that way last year," Litster said. "By collecting hard data, we have an opportunity to go even deeper into the science of why things happen and identify a path of action."

Purdue's Small Animal Hospital, which has been accredited by the American Animal Hospital Association for more than 25 years, provides routine and specialty healthcare for pets. To make an appointment for the feline service, call (765) 494-1107.

Writer: Maggie Morris, (765) 494-2432, maggiemorris@purdue.edu

Source: Annette Litster, (765) 496-3938, catvet@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

To the News Service home page