Medical therapy

While NSAIDs are the mainstay of OA therapy, alternative drug classes include: N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) inhibitors, opioids, corticosteroids, and chondromodulating agents.

Supportive therapies

Appropriate use of nonpharmacologic therapy—exercise, nutritional therapy, weight reduction—as an adjunct to pharmacologic agents can enhance pain prevention, management, and treatment.

Surgical therapy

In certain cases, when a condition can be corrected by surgical intervention, surgery may be appropriate. Common surgical procedures include joint fusion, joint replacement, joint stabilization, and joint excision.

Regardless of the treatment approach selected, the goals of the practitioner should remain the same: to relieve pain and inflammation, slow disease progression, and improve patient quality of life.

The use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)

NSAIDs remain the #1 prescribed medication to treat the pain and inflammation associated with canine OA. Practitioners have long relied on NSAIDs to relieve inflammation and pain while greatly improving quality of life for their patients.

While NSAIDs are a mainstay of OA treatment, the potential risks associated with their use—most notably, gastric ulcers, liver disease, and kidney failure—have caused veterinarians to be judicious about NSAID usage. Veterinary professionals have learned to balance the need to relieve pain with the responsibility of doing so in a manner that poses the least amount of risk to patients.

To this end, the FDA and numerous veterinary professional groups have endorsed the practice of using the lowest effective dose for the shortest duration consistent with individual response to minimize gastric and renal side effects and minimize cartilage damage. Using an oral liquid NSAID such as METACAM makes achieving the lowest effective dose easier, thus allowing truly individualized dosing based on the specific needs of each patient.