Diagnostic tests are obviously required to confirm the presence of many respiratory diseases in dogs and cats. However, respiratory medicine is an underdeveloped subspecialty in veterinary medicine, and there are relatively few sophisticated tests that are available to the clinician that actually diagnose specific pulmonary disorders. Instead, most of the commonly available tests are best used to point us in the right direction, and to rule out the presence of other potentially confounding disorders. So for example, when an older dog has a new-onset cough, an abnormal chest radiograph can point us toward a diagnosis of pulmonary malignancy, heart worm disease etc, while a normal chest radiograph may suggest a diagnosis of inhaled foreign body.
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