Looking for phosphate binders for dogs? First thing that you need to do is not to find it online. Why so? It’s best to look for recommendation from your vet’s advice. Alternately, you can purchase one, and ask your vet whether it is a good one or not. But of course, the first method is much recommended.
Before going far with knowing what kind of drug phosphate binders for dogs is, let’s learn what these ‘binders’ are. Just as its name, phosphate binders are kind of medication used to reduce the level of phosphorus in the blood level.
This drug also acts as an agent to prevent the body from absorbing lower amount of phosphorus. In addition, the excessive phosphorus which your dog gets from its diet will be directly passed out of the body through its digestive system.
You may wonder why serum phosphate needs to be bound in chronic kidney disease patients. To answer that, you need to understand that there are four main goals which are required to make a longer life expectation for dogs suffering from chronic kidney disease:
- Providing appropriate and adequate nutrition.
- Fixing fluid excess/deficits, electrolyte abnormalities, as well as acid-base imbalance.
- Reducing any clinical signs of chronic kidney disease.
- Making the disease slower in progress with renoprotective therapy.
The administration of phosphate binders is one of the ways to achieve the second goal. According to some sources, the excessive phosphorus intake leads to inappropriately high serum level of phosphorus apparently promoting kidney damage in CDK patients.
Typically, this type of drug is prescribed for dogs with chronic kidney disease (CDK). Since there are various kinds of phosphorus binders for dogs, you should know which one works best for your dogs.
The currently marketed and mostly used phosphate binding agent is typically containing aluminum with oxide, hydroxide, or carbonate salts. These salts can be pretty effective in both dogs and cats, hence why it is made into the first choice of phosphate binding agents.
Alternately, calcium acetate, calcium carbonate, lanthanum carbonate, and sevelamer hydrochloride can become the option for phosphate binding agents as well. However, this drugs use is limited since it may lead to hypercalcemia which can have an adverse effect on patients with CDK.
Administering phosphate binders are not enough to lowering the progress of this disease, so, a thorough treatment to achieve the goal mentioned above is highly needed. The treatment for chronic kidney disease can be pretty difficult to do for first-time pet parents. Of course, it will need your utter patience to tackle the difficulty when facing your dog’s disease with phosphate binders for dogs.
