How Experience Can Be Useful in Veterinary Pathological Anatomy

Veterinary anatomical pathology is a medical specialty very similar to human anatomical pathology. This specialty consists in diagnosing diseases, based mostly on the gross and microscopic examination of organs and tissues, obtained by surgical procedure or necropsy It consists in the application of criteria based in the knowledge of the gross and histological lesions to obtain a final pathological diagnosis. The aim of this specific diagnosis is, generally, to find which disease affects the animal, if it is alive, or what caused its death. The main difficulties in veterinary pathological diagnosis are related to the various animal species a pathologist has to deal with, the use of exhaustive classifications of different types, the costs, the subjectivity, including disagreement between the clinical and pathologic diagnoses, and the urgency in issuing the report. So the urgent need to compile all available information to obtain a diagnosis, in a short period of time, is the constant challenge placed to the professional experts in the area concerned. This chapter proposes a framework and a software system that can be useful for making diagnosis of disease. We developed the framework based on the analysis of the bibliography of the domain. Both proposals can be useful for making better diagnosis.This work was supported by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, Center for Studies in Education, Technologies and by Health and by strategic project PEst-OE/CED/UI4016/201

CBR technique in Veterinary Pathological Anatomy

Veterinary Pathological Anatomy consists in the application of criteria based in the knowledge of the macroscopic and histological lesions to obtain a final pathological diagnosis. The aim of this specific diagnosis is, generally, to determine which disease affects the animal, in case of being alive, or what the cause of death in case it was death. Unlike human medicine, dedicated to a single specie, the Veterinary Medicine is dedicated to different animal species, usually grouped into specialties based in affinity of species (e.g. pets - dogs and cats, ruminants, exotic species, etc). Also pathological anatomy uses exhaustive classifications of different types (e.g. infectious diseases, metabolic diseases, endocrine diseases, neoplasm’s, etc.). So the urgent need to compile all available information to obtain a diagnosis, in a short period of time, which will help to save the animal life, is the constant challenge placed to the professional experts in the area concerned. The proposal of using the Case Based-Reasoning (CBR) technique in this area aims at offer a training tool to the professional and attendants, as well as a research instrument to analyze the similarities or deviations of the diagnosed cases, to improve the veterinarian pathologist’s performance and therefore achieve greater success in helping clinicians saving more animals