Replying to Raquel M. 24/03/2022 - 16:32
Hello.
I hope you are well. I have popped the first part of your question below so I do not miss anything:
”A colleague had discontinued NSAIDs in a dog on long term nsaid use for arthritis throughout his elbows and hips. He had discontinued it because after questioning the owner had reported that the dog had been eating grass for the last few months. The dog had been doing really well on multimodal pain management along with the NSAIDs. I wasn’t aware that eating grass was a clinical sign of nausea or indication of GI ulceration from NSAID use. Are you able to shed some light on this? Is this something I should questioning owners about or is this something unproven?”
Eating grass can indeed be a clinical sign of nausea, but it is really non specific. They can obviously eat grass for lots of other reasons. Again, you could see this with ulceration from NSAIDs secondary to nausea. It is a fine line to walk as you would obviously not want to continue NSAIDs in a dog that was developing ulcers. I would have considered a couple of days of anti-emetic therapy first and see what kind of response there was. Abdominal ultrasound may also be useful for ulceration, although small ulcers are difficult to detect. You could possibly consider faecal occult blood testing as another way of looking for ulceration/bleeding.
Overall, this is not something I would routinely be asking owners about but could flag up the possibility of nausea.
Scott 🙂
