What should be monitored in a senior dog or cat?

Renal function, urine protein and specific gravity, blood pressure, thyroid status in cats, cardiac load where a murmur or signs exist, and an inflammatory marker where chronic disease is present. The choice of marker matters less than using the same one consistently.

How often should senior monitoring be repeated?

For stable animals, every six to twelve months is a reasonable default; for animals with known disease, the interval is set by the condition. The interval should be written down at the previous visit, not decided ad hoc.

Is a normal panel reassuring in an older animal?

It is reassuring about the parameters measured and nothing else. Filtration markers do not detect proteinuria, hypertension or concentrating defects — the findings that most often change management in older animals.

Seniors: Shifting from Diagnosis to Monitoring

Quick Answer — In older animals the testing question changes. It is rarely “what disease does this animal have” and usually “is the disease I know about progressing, and has something new appeared”. That shift makes consistency the most important property of a monitoring programme: the same markers, on the same platform, at a defined interval.

Quick Answer

Diagnosis is a snapshot. Senior care is a series. The series only works if the method does not change mid-stream.

The monitoring set

Parameter	Why it is tracked	Frequency guide
Creatinine and urine specific gravity	Filtration and concentrating ability together	Pending months
SDMA where creatinine is confounded	Muscle-mass-independent filtration	Pending months
Urine protein:creatinine	Proteinuria is a treatment target, invisible to filtration markers	Pending months
Blood pressure	Both cause and consequence of renal and cardiac disease	Pending months
T4 in cats	Hyperthyroidism is common and treatable	Pending months
NT-proBNP where murmur or signs exist	Cardiac load; interpretation with renal function	On indication
Inflammatory marker where chronic disease exists	Trend supports response assessment	On indication

The first four rows are the ones most often skipped, and they are the ones that change management. A senior panel that reports creatinine and nothing else is measuring filtration and calling it a health check.

Why consistency beats comprehensiveness

If a cat’s creatinine is measured on one platform in March and a different one in September, the difference between the two values includes the bias between platforms. In an animal whose change over six months might be 15%, a 10–30% method bias is the whole signal.

The same principle applies to switching markers: tracking SDMA for a year and then creatinine for the next year produces a curve that cannot be interpreted.

Data pending. This section reports measured values from internal validation studies. They are published once the supporting study is complete; the current report is available from technical support on request.

What a senior visit should decide

Has anything changed since last time? Requires comparable data.
Is the known disease controlled? Requires the marker that reflects it, not a general panel.
Is there something new? Weight, blood pressure, urine, and clinical examination find most of it — the laboratory confirms.
When is the next measurement? Written down now, not left to the next visit.

Where senior testing goes wrong

Broad panels instead of targeted monitoring. Cost without decision value.
Marker switching. Trend becomes uninterpretable.
Skipping urine testing. Proteinuria and concentrating ability are invisible to blood markers.
Skipping blood pressure. Hypertension is common, silent and treatable.
Over-testing the stable animal. Six-monthly is a default, not a ritual.
Treating an age-related value as disease. Senior reference intervals matter, where they exist.

Six traps

Panel breadth substituting for monitoring consistency.
Ignoring the urine. The commonest omission.
No written next interval.
Treating an isolated value. Trend first.
Using a different platform each visit. Bias enters the trend.
Assuming normal filtration means normal kidney. Proteinuria and hypertension are separate.

The Author’s Take

Position. Senior care is the segment where a vendor’s value is least about assays and most about record continuity — and that is an argument for platform consistency that no brochure makes.

Reasoning. In a young animal, one test answers one question. In an older animal, the value is in the curve, and the curve is only as good as its comparability. A vendor that publishes its precision at monitoring concentrations, keeps reference intervals stable across lots, and warns about method switching is selling something more durable than a cartridge: it is selling the ability to know whether the animal is getting worse. Clinics that understand this become single-platform practices by choice, which is the most defensible form of customer retention available in this market.

Disclosure. Clinical and operational guidance, not a performance claim. Figures marked indicate where platform data and monitoring intervals must be inserted.

Sources

Reference to be added.
Reference to be added.
CLSI EP28-A3c — age-appropriate reference intervals; CLSI EP05 — precision.