{"id":3346,"date":"2009-09-25T07:00:24","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=3346"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:43:08","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:43:08","slug":"veterinary-pathology-residents-hone-diagnostic-skills-in-uconn-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2009\/09\/veterinary-pathology-residents-hone-diagnostic-skills-in-uconn-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"Veterinary Pathology Residents Hone Diagnostic Skills in UConn Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Vanessa<\/a>
Vanessa Schumacher, a resident in veterinary pathology, prepares tissue samples at the Connecticut Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. Photo by Peter Morenus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From unraveling the mystery of the country\u2019s earliest occurrences of West Nile encephalitis to conducting a necropsy on the chimpanzee that mauled a woman in Connecticut, residents in the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory<\/a> at UConn routinely confront cases that reach nearly every branch of the animal kingdom and can involve high-profile, confidential circumstances.<\/p>\n

These individuals, all professionally trained veterinarians, come to UConn with a specific interest in pursuing advanced education in pathology \u2013 the study of diseases and their causes. Working alongside UConn faculty, themselves board-certified veterinary pathologists, the residents receive biopsies and conduct necropsies on a highly diverse range of creatures as part of UConn\u2019s residency training program in veterinary pathology.<\/p>\n

The program is part of the Department of Pathobiology and Veterinary Science<\/a> in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re on the front lines, so to speak,\u201d says Dr. Herbert Van Kruiningen, professor of pathobiology and veterinary science. \u201cIf there is a disease that\u2019s introduced deliberately \u2013 to damage an agricultural species, for example \u2013 we would be the ones to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Dr. Francisco Carvallo, one of UConn\u2019s six current veterinary pathology residents, their cases \u2013 which arrive from veterinary hospitals, farmers, government agencies, and pet owners seeking a definitive diagnosis on a companion pet\u2019s unexplained death \u2013 deal with \u201ceverything that moves that isn\u2019t human.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the course of their training, this handful of residents will handle hundreds of pathology cases, involving dogs, cats, birds, mice, raccoons, foxes, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, as well as livestock such as sheep, chickens, horses, and cattle.<\/p>\n

In recent years, residents have had greater opportunity to investigate cases involving aquatic animals like seals, sea turtles, seahorses, and octopi, as well as many species exotic to the United States, submitted by zoos and aquariums nationwide through a mail-in service developed by associate professor Dr. Salvatore Frasca Jr., a veterinary pathologist and 1998 graduate of UConn\u2019s residency program.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn any given day, we don\u2019t know what we\u2019re going to get,\u201d says Van Kruiningen. \u201cWe may get no cases, two cases, or 12 cases. We don\u2019t know if they\u2019re going to be full-size horses or cattle, laboratory rodents, or chickens from a poultry producer. We never know what\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

For pathology resident Dr. Vanessa Schumacher, the variety of cases she and her fellow residents encounter in the lab offers invaluable experience. \u201cI\u2019m especially interested in aquatic species pathology, and I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any other program besides Sea World that sees the animals we do,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

After three years in the University\u2019s residency program in veterinary pathology \u2013 a program with an increasingly prominent reputation \u2013 residents will have acquired the solid, hands-on training required to be eligible to take the board exam of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists (ACVP).<\/p>\n

This intense, three-day exam remains the single most rigorous examination in veterinary medicine; fewer than half of those who take it pass. Successfully completing it, however, results in professional certification from the ACVP, a prestigious qualification highly coveted by employers across biomedicine, from pharmaceutical and biomedical firms to diagnostic labs, governmental agencies, and colleges of veterinary medicine, all of which, Van Kruiningen says, \u201cwant someone who has sound diagnostic skills as a pathologist.\u201d<\/p>\n

One other track is available to UConn\u2019s veterinary residents \u2013 a concurrent program of veterinary residency and Ph.D. study lasting five to six years, through which residents perform their rotations on the pathology service while taking graduate courses and doing research toward a Ph.D. degree. Those who follow this path leave UConn not only qualified to sit for the board exam, but also with a doctorate in hand.<\/p>\n

In addition to tackling their unpredictable caseloads, UConn\u2019s veterinary pathology residents \u2013 who hail from as far away as France, Chile, and India, as well as the United States \u2013 collaborate on studies published in scientific journals, partnering closely with other researchers across the country, specialists at aquariums and zoos, pathology scholars at universities, and renowned experts in various laboratories around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are linked to people all around the country,\u201d Frasca says. \u201cThis is a veterinary pathology residency program with international impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Says Van Kruiningen, \u201cWe\u2019re seeing new stuff all the time, and we never know the impact. I remind the residents, \u2018Sometimes these things look pretty routine, but remember that we\u2019re going to see something new and exciting in the next six months. Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn\u2019s veterinary medical diagnostic laboratory handles a wide variety of cases, including some that involve high-profile circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[49],"class_list":["post-3346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 18:47:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3346"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37611,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3346\/revisions\/37611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3346"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=3346"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}