Internal Medicine for Dogs and Cats

Veterinary Internal Medicine Specialists and Advanced Practitioners diagnose and treat complex illnesses in pets, focusing on diseases affecting internal organs like the kidneys, liver, and gastrointestinal tract. Our team uses advanced diagnostic services for pets to ensure accurate and effective treatment.

We manage a wide range of complex pet illnesses, including diabetes, hormonal disorders, gastrointestinal disease, immune-mediated conditions, and infectious diseases, providing specialist pet healthcare tailored to each animal's needs.

f you are a pet owner and think your pet may need a referral, please speak to your usual vet for advice. Vets can submit a referral for veterinary diagnostics through our online form.

We welcome Wakefield veterinary referrals as well as cases from across Yorkshire and beyond.

For chronic cases, and pets who do not need to stay in the hospital overnight for treatment, the Internal Medicine team like to do the initial consultation with you over the phone. We recognise that many owners have to travel a long way to get to Paragon, and not knowing what to expect when you get here can be worrying, in particular uncertainty over whether your pet will need to stay overnight for all the tests they may need, and whether they will need a general anaesthetic.

We appreciate that veterinary care can be costly, and we always try to tailor our suggested plan to what is manageable financially for you. Doing our initial consultation over the phone allows us to make a plan for your pet’s investigations and care that works for you, both practically and financially, and to get prior approval from your insurance company if needed. It also gives you a chance to think things over rather than feeling pressured to make decisions because you have already travelled to the hospital.

Following the initial phone appointment, we normally arrange for you to bring your pet to the hospital on a mutually convenient day, usually within the next few days to a week. We try, wherever possible, to schedule all the tests for a single day, to save the worry of your pet spending a night away from home.

If your pet is critically unwell and needs in-hospital care or emergency treatment, we will ask you to bring them to the hospital for their initial appointment. This means we can start stabilising them with supportive treatment such as painkillers and intravenous fluids straight away while we arrange their tests.

If you have a phone consultation scheduled and are worried your pet is getting worse, please take them to your usual vets for a check-up they will contact us to arrange an emergency appointment sooner, if required.

We will work with you to create an investigation plan that is tailored to the best interests of your pet and within the budget you are working with. We will spend time explaining conditions and ensuring you understand what it is going on.

With all Internal Medicine pet referrals, our team works closely with our Soft Tissue surgeons to provide a holistic service for your pet.

Pets will have a 20 to 60-minute consultation with our veterinary Internal Medicine Practitioners where we will take a thorough history and examine your pet carefully. We will always discuss potential costs, outcomes and risks, including potential complications.

We aim to send most Internal Medicine patients home on the same day but if this is not appropriate, we have extensive hospitalisation facilities, including an ICU which is supported by a Specialist in Emergency and Critical Care to care for your pet during their stay.

Before your appointment we ask your local vets to send us all of your pet’s clinical notes, test results, and any scans  or X-rays, so our vets can review in-depth what has been done already. Once we have this information, we will arrange for you to have either a telephone consultation or we may ask you to come directly to the hospital with your pet.

We will gather further information from you, discuss what we know already from the tests your vets have completed, the possibilities for what may be going on, and the options for further tests or treatments, giving you the opportunity to ask any questions you may have.