Developing Practice Guidelines for Canine Atopic Dermatitis
Dr. Thierry Olivry, professor of Immunodermatology at the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, led the development and is the lead author of the "2010 Practice Guidelines for Canine Atopic Dermatitis,” the open-source standard of care recommendations proposed by the International Task Force on Canine Atopic Dermatitis.
The peer-reviewed guidelines—a first for the specialty of veterinary dermatology— represent a consensus of evidence-based recommendations on how to treat dogs with canine atopic dermatitis. The guidelines took two years to develop and are now being translated in different languages and provided free to veterinarians around the world.
French, German, and Spanish translations will be posted online soon and versions are underway in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish and Farsi (Persian).
“I would like to thank editors at the Journal of Veterinary Dermatology and the Wiley-Blackwell publishing company for working with us on this project and to agreeing to this unique and widespread mode of disseminating the guidelines,” says Dr. Olivry. “We hope publishing in multiple languages will help us achieve our common goal of increasing the quality of care dogs with atopic dermatitis receive worldwide. We also hope that this model of collaboration might serve to help develop additional evidence-based guidelines for other common diseases.”
Approved translations will be posted online and will be open access. Additional "secondary publications" will be developed to serve as interpretations of the guidelines for local practitioners and to allow for local recommendations when referenced drugs are not available in a given country, or if cultural differences make a treatment recommendation difficult to accept or implement. These secondary interpretations will be published in trade journals or magazines of various languages that are distributed to veterinary practitioners.
May 25, 2010
