Thanks for posting this, Lola!
"A cat will throw up as soon as look at you." -- From one of the many vets I'd gone to.
"That's just the way they are, suck it up, you've got 20 more years of this." -- From an immediate family member, when I expressed my concerns about the
daily/several times a day vomiting/regurgitation both Pookie and his sister did for MONTHS.
I wish, oh how I wish, this information had been available years ago. I know it's pointless to beat myself up, but I wonder how much long-term damage was done to my furkids because of my ignorance and the ignorance of the many vets I went to. My only (small) comfort is that I didn't give up and eventually found some answers, and Pookie's health, at least, is the better for it.
Pookie's sister had far more problems than he did, and she had an endoscopy. I wonder, now, if they had done a surgical biopsy as mentioned in the article, if they would have found something. Instead, I was given a "prescription" food.
Now that she's with someone else, I still wonder if she did/does have some form of cancer, and it either hasn't really shown up yet or the person who has her isn't telling me . . .
It should be noted that dietary treatment may work for some cat with frequent vomiting and/or diarrhea if the symptoms are caused by food allergies or insensitivities. Increasingly, holistically oriented veterinarians are seeing a connection between diet and IBD. These vets believe that commercial pet foods, especially dry foods, are a contributing factor to the large numbers of cats with chronic IBD. They also discovered that many cats improve by simply changing their diets to a balanced grain-free raw meat diet. Similar results may be achieved with a grain-free canned diet, but a raw diet seems to lead to quicker and better results.
I truly, truly hope that vets start opening their minds and listening to this information. There are just way too many pets that are suffering, and their owners/pawrents with them, because the vets aren't "getting it."