Evaluation of the diagnostic value and safety of the rectally applied ammonia tolerance test in dogs

Abstract

An evaluation is performed to evaluate the diagnostic value and safety of the ammonia tolerance test (ATT) in dogs which might suffer a form of portosystemic shunting. the results of this research confirm the earlier found values of almost 100% for the sensitivity and specificity of the ATT. Beside of this, non of the 126 dogs in this research did show any clinical signs after or during the performance of the ATT, and so we can conclude that their isn't any potential risk due to performing an ATT. This evaluation shows also that the measurement of basal ammonia in combination with the measurement of fatty acids gives comparable results for the sensitivity as when performing an ATT only. At last we evaluated the best way to perform an ATT. Although it is usual to perform two additional bloodtest during an ATT we found in this research, that the first of this this addiotional samples at t=20 did not have any diagnostic value above that token at time is 40 minutes.