Meet The Author
February 2025
Julien Guillaumin, Docteur Veterinaire, Dip ACVECC, Dip ECVECC
I am from the west coast of France, grew up there, did my veterinary school in France, and moved to the US 20 years ago. I have worked at UC Davis, Cornell University, Ohio State University, and now I am Colorado State University. I worked in private practice while in France as well. My family and I enjoy travelling to warm places. I do enjoy horseback riding in the summer and playing hockey with my son in the winter.
Michael Yee, Julien Guillaumin, Meredith't Hoen, Jiazhang Cai, Jonathan Mochel and Rebecca Walton
The Study Background
I have had an interest in feline aortic thromboembolism for many years now, starting while I was a resident at UC Davis in the mid-2000s. I have published several articles on the topic in the past several years. I was approached by Dr Yee, a former student of mine from CSU, now a resident at Iowa State University, on that specific topic.
What is the primary knowledge gap your study aims to address?
We wanted to investigate peripheral glucose and lactate differences to help the diagnosis of feline arterial thromboembolism, in a prospective way with a strong control group. Glucose differentials have been investigated, but not lactate differentials.
The Study Design
We did a prospective, multicentric, controlled study. The primary objective of our study was to establish cutoff values to diagnose a saddle thrombus cat using differences in lactate (Δlactate) and glucose (Δglucose) blood concentrations between affected and non-affected limbs.
What are the main study results?
In our study, we showed that the optimal ∆glucose cutoff of 41 mg/dL resulted in a diagnosis of FATE with 100% sensitivity and specificity with a PPV and NPV of 100%. An optimal ∆lactate cutoff of 2.2 mmol/L resulted in a diagnosis of FATE with 100% sensitivity and 95% specificity, with a positive predictive value (PPV) of 86% and negative predictive value (NPV) of 100%.
Were there any unexpected results or challenges during your research?
I though the ∆lactate would have a better PPV and NPV than the ∆glucose, based on visual inspection of the data set, but the stats ended up proving me wrong!
Takeaways from this study
A FATE diagnosis is usually clinical, so I don't think you should use glucose differentials on every case, but if there are not clear case, or if you are going to spend a lot of money on the cat, decide to euthanize, or for research perspectives, using a ∆glucose will be useful.
What future directions would you like to explore based on this study?
Our study showed a different ∆glucose cut-off compared to another previous study (41 vs 30 mg/dL), so it would be interested to have more cases, more institutions, etc.
