Hello and welcome back to the Small Animal Clinical Podcasts brought to you from the Royal Veterinary College in London. My name is Shailen Jassani. Before we get into today's podcast, I just wanted to acknowledge the people that have taken the time to rate and or review these podcasts on iTunes. There are only a small number so far, but they're all five-star ratings, which is awesome.

And thanks also to the two users, Charlie Tusson, and someone going by the name of hype user

for the review comments.

As always, I would love it if other listeners could spare the time to do the same.

As I always say, it seems like iTunes is set up

in a way that the more ratings and reviews you get, the more likely it is that others will

find your podcast. So, shameless plug, if you can spare 30 seconds, get on there and rate and review

the podcast. That would be great. Okay, so let's get on with today's podcast. I'm joined once again by a long-time friend and

colleague Karen Hum, just to remind you, Karen, is a lecturer in emergency and critical care here at

the Queen Mother Hospital for Animals and one of the co-directors of the Transfusion Service.

So thanks very much for joining me again, Karen, especially so soon after your last time.

Thank you for asking me.

So today we're going to talk about the nightmare that is lungworm in dogs.

Now, I should explain to the listeners that we will be talking about angiostrongolus bazaum,

which is the canine lungworm that we have here in the United Kingdom,

and which is also found elsewhere in the world, and we'll touch on that a little bit later.

We are obviously aware that there are other types of lungworm that affect dogs and also cats, but today we're focusing on canine angiostromulosis, which is a bit of a mouthful, so I think I'm just going to call it lungworm.

So Karen, I suppose the most obvious, if not the most exciting place to start is by asking if you could please explain to us what this worm is,

and tell us the key points about the life cycle and how dogs come to be infected.

Okay. I think it is exactly... You look so excited about that.

No, I totally am because I always think that with these parasitic life cycles,

it's always amazing, aren't they?

...