VTH (Veterinary Teaching Hospital), AVC (Atlantic Veterinary College), Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada: an overview of eighteen years of parasitology traffic.

INTRODUCTION. The Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) is the only veterinary medicine faculty in Atlantic Canada. AVC was born in 1986 and also has a state-of-the-art teaching hospital. The parasitology diagnostic laboratory started a user-friendly data system that goes from January, 2000 to November, 2017. Really few surveys are present in literature like that (Raue et al., 2011, Parasitol. Res. 116:3315–3330). MATERIALS AND METHODS. The objective of this study was to summarize the parasitology laboratory exam results. Descriptive analysis was carried out with the Stata statistical software package, version 15.1. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS. A total of 35,513 samples were tested, belonging to exotic animals, wildlife, livestock and pets mostly from the eastern and Atlantic provinces of Canada. There was a mean of 1972.94 samples (525.05 SD) per year, and the range showed a minimum of 1365 and a maximum of 2954 per year. There were eight performed tests including: Baermann technique, Direct Smear, Egg counts, Sedimentation and Fecal flotation, Canine Heartworm Antigen Test, Neospora caninum Antibody Test, and Skin scraping. The kinds of specimens tested were feces, blood samples, sera and skin. The animal species represented in our study population were: dogs (19,570), bovine (4,797), cats (3,358), sheep (3,051), horses (2,312) and other (1,114), such as birds, foxes, goats, lynx, pigs and raccoons. Overall, out of 35,513 samples, 10,026 (28.2%) were positive for parasites. Protozoa were in 4068 (40.5%) of the 10,026 samples. Gastro-Intestinal Nematodes were found in 3658 samples (36%). Trichostrongyle eggs occupied approximately a third of the samples (40.9/). Cestoda were in 306 (3%) samples, of which Moniezia spp. played the greatest role (55.9%). Lungworms and Capillaridae were in 598 (6%) and 178 (2%) samples, respectively, where the most common species recovered was Crenosoma vulpis. Ascarididae were present in 803 (8%) samples, of which Toxocara spp. was the most frequent. Trematoda were found in 44 (0.43%) specimens. Mites were recovered in 28 of 97 (28.9%) skin scraping, and ten of those were identified as Demodex spp. Interesting results were 33 Alaria spp. cases, three in foxes and thirty in dogs. Also interesting was the detection of 21 cases of cardiopulmonary dirofilariosis in dog. Increasing surveillance of this vector-borne disease agent would be important as the climate, vector range, and habitat continues to change throughout Canada.