GERIATRIA CANINA: UMA ABORDAGEM SOBRE A SÍNDROME DE DISFUNÇÃO COGNITIVA

Abstract

In recent years, veterinary medicine has undergone advances, due to the increase in life expectancy, where there has been greater interest from tutors to improve the quality of life of their animals. Thus, there is a need for research on the aging processes, and consequently the knowledge about the affections involved in this process. The characterization of aging in the canine species depends on several factors such as: size, genetics, body score and management, where elderly dogs can be characterized into three groups, according to how they age, which may be the ones that do not present dysfunction, the those with mild cognitive deficits and those with severe dysfunction. Justifying the aging process, some theories are considered, where one of them mentions that aging is programmed in the genome and the other that it is attributed to an accumulation of random errors. However, aging should not be treated as a disease, but as a physiological process of progressive reduction of biological functions. In this process, there is a gradual reduction of all physiological functions and behavioral changes, where there is a predisposition to certain affections, such as cognitive dysfunction syndrome. Thus, there is a need to carry out the presumptive diagnosis for therapeutic interventions, which we find drug prescription, nutritional and integrative veterinary medicine, which aim to delay the evolution of the disease and consequently offer quality of life to the elderly animal that presents signs of neurodegeneration, as the final diagnosis can only be made post-mortem. Thus, this study aimed to review the literature related to the aging process of the canine species, as well as the approach to the disease called cognitive dysfunction syndrome, in order to obtain a basis for improving the clinical conduct in caring for these animals.