BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Neurology and Neurosurgery
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1583988
USEFULNESS OF CEREBROSPINAL FLUID ANALYSIS IN DOGS AND CATS WITH SUSPECTED INTRACRANIAL DISEASE AND NORMAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Veterinary Medicine, School of Biological Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
- 2Linnaeus Veterinary Limited, West Midlands, England, United Kingdom
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis is a common diagnostic tool in the investigation of neurological presentations. Whether its routine use after every brain MRI is warranted is debated amongst clinicians, and its usefulness after a normal MRI has not yet been examined. To investigate whether CSF analysis affected the final diagnosis in dogs and cats with suspected intracranial disease in the presence of unremarkable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), clinical, imaging and laboratory records of dogs and cats with suspected intracranial disease, unremarkable MRI and CSF analysis were reviewed in this multi-center retrospective study. Of 593 animals, (533 dogs and 60 cats), 17 dogs (3%) had abnormal CSF, nine of these demonstrating pleocytosis (with or without elevated microprotein) and eight showing hyperproteinorrachia alone. In only five of these dogs (0.8% of the total cohort) was the final diagnosis and/or treatment meaningfully affected by CSF findings: three diagnosed with inflammatory brain conditions and two had undetermined diagnoses, with corticosteroids initiated following abnormal CSF results. No cats in this population had an abnormal CSF. All dogs with a diagnosis based on abnormal CSF results had an abnormal neurological examination. In this population, CSF analysis was unlikely to reveal an undiagnosed intracranial condition following an unremarkable brain MRI, particularly in dogs presenting with a normal neurological examination. In dogs presenting with an abnormal neurological examination or a high suspicion of inflammatory disease, CSF evaluation following normal MRI is more likely to be diagnostically valuable.
Keywords: Brain, diagnostic, imaging, CLINICAL PATHOLOGY, Inflammation
Received: 26 Feb 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Monforte, De Risio, Alves and Vanhaesebrouck. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Susana Monforte, Department of Veterinary Medicine, School of Biological Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 0ES, England, United Kingdom
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.